Imagine taking a loved one on a trip to Sweden, deciding to go kayaking because it looks like fun, then having to be rescued by a handsome stranger when you’re nearly swept out to sea. Jennifer Garner doesn’t have to imagine it; she actually lived it on a trip with her 12 year-old daughter in August, and we’re so glad she lived to tell the tale.
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According to Entertainment Tonight, when Garner appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon on September 5, he asked her about an Instagram post she made on August 6 and prompted quite the tale from the Peppermint star.
The Instagram post, which ostensibly shows Garner and her daughter watching the Swedish sunset from their kayak, is captioned, “On a pre-middle-school sneak away with my eldest… Did I get us lost in a kayak? Yes. Did we paddle as hard as we could for 100 hours and end up in a shipping lane? I’m afraid so. Did we have to be rescued? Yup. #thesunsetwasabigupside #shenevercomplained #thankyoumattias #welovedyousweden”
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Luckily, Garner went into way more detail when speaking to Fallon. Per ET, Garner said that the whole event started when her eldest daughter, Violet, had to do a school report on a foreign country. She chose Sweden, and Garner said she “got so into it and loved it so much” that she thought it would be nice to take Violet to see the country itself for a few days, just the two of them.
While they were there, they saw folks kayaking in Stockholm and decided to give it a go. Garner said that things were fine at first, but then they entered a loop that should have taken 10 minutes to complete. “An hour later, we were not back,” she told Fallon. “And not only that, all of the sudden, there were huge bridges going over us, there were like big boats, and [the river] went from very small to quite wide. And then Violet said, ‘Mom, there’s a stop light in the water.’ And through that stop light, it’s a loch to the ocean.”
Yikes! Garner said she and Violet paddled like mad to escape the current that started to pull them toward the ocean; she called the kayak rental company for advice, who told her to just turn around—which is easier said than done.
“Suddenly, we saw this blond human, with the sun behind him like a halo, and he was coming to our rescue,” Garner said, revealing the happy ending to her potentially tragic story. “He showed up and he led us back. And his name was Mattias! I’ll never forget Mattias. He saved us. He did.”
More: Jennifer Garner & Daughter Get Lost on Kayaking Trip in Sweden
We’re really glad this kayaking trip turned into a fun story with a happy ending for Garner and Violet, given how rapidly things could have gone downhill. That rescue definitely sounds like the perfect premise for a romantic comedy. We’d pay to see that glowing, blonde human coming to the rescue, for sure. Perhaps Chris Hemsworth can play Mattias? Just a thought.
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