The day started out with a GREAT breakfast at our Comfort Inn & Suites in Spokane. They had a large selection of hot and cold items including made to order omelettes and four staff running around keeping everything full and the place clean. In Canada, we're lucky if one employee glances into the room once. Don't know how they do it here other than perhaps paying the staff a lot less. It was a warm and sunny day so the roof was down all the way to Seattle. I have never driven this route before so was really surprised at the changing terrain, from evergreen forests to semi-desert to farming. We stopped at a great viewpoint with paved trails all around the cliff-side on the Columbia River, just before crossing the bridge. Then it was over ... read more

It's hard to believe that we've actually moved out of our beautiful little lake house at Clearwater. It all happened so fast and the past couple of weeks have been so hectic, selling and giving away all of the furniture and packing and storing everything else. Now that we see it took two storage units to fit everything, we've realized that we are failures at downsizing! We finally left Swift Current about 4:30pm yesterday and made it as far as Calgary, AB. I had a lot of Fairmont coupons to use up so we're checking into the Palliser for two nights at a very low rate, only paying for one night, free upgrade to a one-bedroom suite, and $200 in free meals! There's no way I could pass up that good a deal! After a late ... read more

Saturday, January 4th started with us at the larger venue, the Malmo Arena for the 3PM game. Our seats were at the centre line, 2nd row of the upper deck above the penalty boxes. We watched Sweden beat the Russians 2-1 in a game that ended with fighting that will likely result in some suspensions on both sides for Sunday's games. Although we cheered along with the Swedes that were sitting all around us, we secretly hoped the Russians would win as our preference was to play Russia in the medal round rather than Sweden. Canada played Finland at 7PM and as usual, the stands were FULL of Canadians as well as a lot of Swedes too. It was apparent early on that our boys were not quite up to the task of taking on Finland. ... read more

Our day started off early, taking the bus to Emporia shopping mall by the Malmo Arena. We wandered around with minimal shopping then had lunch at a couple fast food places by the arena. We went to the Sweden-Russia game in the arena after lunch and while looking for our seats, we were approached by one of the volunteers. She was waiting for us with four new tickets, 11th row centre ice, because the system had accidentally generated our original tickets in seats that did not exist. Great service! And always nice to get a free upgrade! It was an exciting game and the Swedes were winning when we left after the 2nd period to bus over to the Malmo Isstadion for the Canada-USA game. We watched the Swedes win their game on the big screen ... read more

December 29 A couple of buses got us into downtown Malmo with our first stop at Gustav Adolfs torg, a square with a variety of food booths, crafts and ice sculpture going on. From there we walked through some pedestrian shopping areas, and along the ocean and through the train station and shipyard areas until we passed by the Turning Torso building. The vision of HSB Turning Torso is based on a sculpture called Twisting Torso. In 1999 HSB Malmö’s former Managing Director Johnny Örbäck saw the sculpture in a brochure which presented Santiago Calatrava in connection with his contribution to the architectural competition for the Öresund Bridge. It was on this occasion that Johnny Örbäck got the idea to build HSB Turning Torso. Shortly thereafter he travelled to Zurich to meet with Santiago Calatrava and ... read more