In August, we were fortunate enough to spend four days on Gotland, enjoying the most beautiful weather – blue skies, sunshine, and 24 degrees. We took the ferry from the Swedish mainland to Visby and then drove 20 minutes by car to Hotel Stelor on the west coast, near Tofta Beach. Hotel Stelor was our first stop out of three accommodations, and I immediately fell in love with Gotland, Tofta Beach, the green dunes, the white sand, and the wild sea. Sometimes you have those moments in life when everything just clicks. For me and Gotland, it clicked pretty loudly.
Hotel Stelor is a small boutique hotel with six rooms, a shared kitchen, and a living room area. The hotel is surrounded by a huge garden, and the neighboring house hosts the Stelor restaurant, as well as a barn, which is a popular wedding venue but is also used for concerts, yoga and breath work classes. The whole area resembles an old farmhouse, with the barn, a vegetable garden, and sheep and horses in the surrounding paddocks. I haven’t been able to unwind this well in a long time; every night, we slept so deeply that I barely knew where I was in the morning.
The kids were happy on the trampoline, while we parents sat nearby with our coffee. Breakfast at Hotel Stelor is prepared with ingredients from the island. We were there during cucumber and tomato season, so we enjoyed both “from farm to table” at the breakfast table. We were allowed to borrow a handcart and even a cargo bike from Hotel Stelor, which we used to get to the nearby beach as well as to Tofta Beach, a 20-minute bike ride away. In the afternoons, we returned to find freshly baked cake or cookies in the communal kitchen, along with freshly brewed filter coffee. We just hung out here—I can’t really say what we did exactly during those two days at Stelor. A bit of hammock time, long breakfasts, trampoline, a walk to the beach, a nap, and in the evening: a world-class five-course dinner at the Stelor restaurant next door.
I don’t know how many times during those two days I said how much I loved it there. Everything was just perfect. Hotel Stelor invites its guests to feel at home, and I think that was exactly the feeling I had. The beds were even cozier than at home, the view of the garden was the kind you’d dream of for your own home, the coffee was always freshly brewed, vegetables came from the garden, and there was the hammock and the trampoline for the kids.
I completely fell in love with this place. I highly recommend considering Hotel Stelor as a destination when planning a trip to Gotland.
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This was my first post about our trip to Gotland. In follow-up posts, I will introduce you to Surflogiet at Tofta Beach, as well as the UNESCO World Heritage city of Visby, with a fantastic restaurant, Lilla Huset, in following posts. Fabriken Furillen on the east coast of Gotland also deserves its own article —more on that soon. All in all: Wow, Gotland. You blew me away, truly!
