Mixed things up today with a morning bike ride around the neighbouring hills. Then off in the car to Bergen. Today was a hot one (apparently it set a record for hottest day in Bergen's history EVER hitting a high of 31) so we headed to the Nordnes Sjobad which, from the description, you can tell is a pool. It is a very old outdoor pool built into the side of the mountain right on the fjord and is a sea water pool. There are also diving boards and high diving blocks where you can dive the other direction from the pool straight into the ocean. We all swam and Nigel and Russell both dove into the ocean in spite of the jellyfish swimming around. No stings though. Phew! It was a perfect day for hitting ... read more

Up early and went for another run which Nigel mapped out for me. It is a lovely scenic route up and down the rolling hills of our neighbourhood and past cows, lakes, and the fjord. Easy to forget I am running....Woke up the kids and headed out to Os to hop on the ferry down to Rosendal. This is a one-hour ferry ride through several fjords and past many many mountains and makes a few quick stops and ends at Rosendal. Here, we hiked up Sjethaug which is a small mountain with a fantastic lookout point at the top (which I have to take Nigel and Russell's word for since Rachel and I stopped before the top as I was getting nervous about the heights) but the lookout along the whole trail was gorgeous as it ... read more

Today was our last full day here so we made all the rounds to say our goodbyes. We all did the forest trail loop, then we walked down to the lake and walked the paths there to say goodbye. It really is such a lovely spot. We will miss it a lot. Then after lunch we went on our final bike tour guided by Nigel who is getting very familiar with the trails. There are trails literally everywhere here. It is such a pleasure to ride here. Our butts are feeling it now (after biking to Stockholm last night for the game and then again all over today) but tomorrow will be travelling all day so quite sedentary. The bike ride today was really nice. We have noticed that the kids play parks here are so ... read more

Today we drove back to Sigtuna as we had seen several nice places to eat lunch at and there was a great hike that started right in the town. We parked and walked into town and found the shopping lane where the restaurants were also located. After checking all the menus, we settled on a very quaint place where Nigel, Rachel and Russell all had herring served with Swedish style pureed potatoes, lingon berries (a Swedish berry kind of like a cranberry), salad, bread and a tasty berry crumble for dessert. As I am not a big herring fan, I had the not-so-Swedish dish of Croque Monsieur which was also delicious! Then off on our hike. Nigel guided us past lots of water, across bridges, through the woods and eventually back into town (16km later). The ... read more

Up early again for another trip to Stockholm by transit. Made it to our first stop which was a 2 1/2 hour archipelago boat tour. This was fantastic. The weather was perfect and we sailed out of the inner harbour out to the inner archipelago. There are 30,000 islands in this area but we did not see them all (only most of them). This area is cottage country for the locals (although increasingly people are making them year-round homes). They take their cars on ferries and spend their summers on these islands. If they don't have a summer home, they might have a boat and island hop for several weeks at a time. Sweden has a law regarding property that states that anyone can go on any land (as long as they do not do damage ... read more