Crossing Sweden and seeing the midnightsun

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Hello again,

On Monday June 7 I said goodbye to my host and friend Christine who has been the best couchsurf host so far, thanks again for everything. I really had a good time in Stockholm.
So Christine helped me to get to the right airportbus and off I went for another airport, this time destination Lulea. Still overpacked but not according to the Swedish scale so no problems getting on the plane this time.
I landed in Lulea just after noon and took a bus into town because I had to pick up my rental car at Avis. The bus driver put me off at a completely wrong part of town, luckily I found a nice Lulean to guide me to the correct bus station. The next bus driver dropped me off at a big road just across a big street with only offices, big stores and a hotel. I was again lucky, a woman was so kind to drop me with all my bags at the Avis rental centre.
I got the car and started my drive through Sweden. I found a local store somewhere, bought some food and kept going. There are no real motorways here, just 2 lane roads where you can drive up to 110 depending on the situation. The landscape changed quite quickly and so I stopped once and a while to take pictures, stretch my legs, have something to eat, ...
I had time until 11pm to cross the country because I had to puck up Antoine, a colleague from La Louvière who is going to camp with me.
I passed the border, got to Lonsdal in Norway 5 minutes before the train arrived so I was quite pleased with myself, doing all this in one day. Antoine was on the train so we got united to start our camping trip in the North. We found a parking spot that had a table and a toilet next to a small water fall and we quickly put the tent there as it had started to rain.
The next morning, the rain had stopped and sun came in, quite warm and so our tent was soon all dry, ready to get going.
We chose to drive the Norwegian roads so we would see some other nature, the typical fjords to cross the border at Narvik and to end up in Sweden once more.
For the moment we are in the national park of Abisko enjoying the midnight sun. Nature is so incredibly beautiful up here, there are no words for it. Up here in the North it doesn't get dark at all, the sun will set but will basically hide behind the mountains until she is there again some hours later. At this moment it is 11.41 and you can still see the sun, how crazy is that :-)
Tomorrow we will drive as far as we can and we'll find another national park not that far away from Lulea. We'll take the bus or train on Saturday to Umea where we will be hosted by another couchsurfer. I'm sure the weekend will be exciting again.

See you
xxx

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Photos

Sweden
On the road

Sweden
On the road

Sweden
Le Nord ...

Sweden
at the Norwegian border

Norway
Time to pick up antoine! I made it, I crossed the country in 8 hours. Still very bright outside

Norway
The station of Lonsdal, there is nothing else besides this station and a hotel

Norway
The station of Lonsdal

Norway
The train arrives

Norway
A Norwegian colleague ;-)

Norway
11.30pm putting up our tent next to a little waterfall beside the road. Wild camping :-)

Norway
Going through many tunnels

Norway
mmm nice water. We filled our bottles whenever we found a source like this or a river

Comments

[Barbaraw]

hey scheetje, met iemand genaamd "Antoine" kan het alleen maar goed gaan hé :-) ttz: alle Antoines die ik ken, zijn wijze mensen :-) Geniet maar van de natuur daar. Als ik je beschrijving zo hoor en ik zit hier op een hoop bakstenen en bouwafval te kijken... ik zou ook wel weten wat te kiezen :-) Maar goed nieuws: tegen dat je terug bent, zitten we in het appartement. Dan kan je honderduit komen vertellen met een lekker bakkie koffie bij! Dikke kussen Barbara, Bouke en Arie