Days 06-08

---

Day 6: Adelso*

Today we woke to almost complete silence – the birds here are more considerate than ours – then spent the day exploring the island that is our domicile for the week. The neighbourhood here is a bucolic little patch not unlike Bellbrae in its mix of small farms, weekenders and commuters, but only 50 km from a national capital. Deer can occasionally be spotted gambolling in the fields – we have to close the gate here lest they come in and ruin Gloria’s garden. Oh, and the island was once the administrative centre of the Viking world.

We visited at Hovsgarden the remains of the royal stronghold of around the 12th century, and a medieval church that stands on the site of an older pagan one, then went for a walk in the woods. If you’re not into birch and conifer, you might find the latter a bit same-ish after a while. But serene.

At night we were the only guests in the island’s only restaurant. The proprietor has married a Peruvian, and so, in a bizarre gastro-coincidence, we enjoyed ceviche and other features of the same cuisine that Lachlan was exalting from across the world just a week or two ago.


* Editing note: up to now, I have been scrupulously adding the funny little dots and things that sometimes adorn certain Swedish vowels. It is a piece of pedantry (from an Anglo viewpoint) that without a specialist keyboard is too time-consuming on what ought to be a holiday, so I am now going to abandon it. Sorry, Swedes.


Day 7: Uppsala

About 70 km north of Stockholm, Uppsala has a bit of a Cambridge feel to it – a university town with a youthful vibe, a waterside location and lots of bicycles. An ancient settlement with prehistoric and Viking connections, elucidated by an excellent museum, lies just outside the modern boundaries. The cathedral in town is huge and beautiful, the student population suns itself in the unexpectedly early spring sunshine by the canal, the ice-cream is superb. A delight of a day trip.

We are getting better at partial translations of Swedish signs into English via Anglo-Saxon connections. “Sjukhus” to “hospital”, for instance. The place names sound familiar: we have seen adapted versions of them in northern Scotland in the past, named by the Viking invaders, in towns there such as Scrabster, Thurso and Kirkwall.

Things to like about Sweden:
1. Just for us, in a month where the average maximum is 8 degrees, it turns on a succession of sunny days in the mid-teens.
2. Women with grey hair are mostly happy to let it be grey, and look the better for it.
3. Swedes love dogs. They walk them everywhere, including shops and trains. There is a prime-time TV show in which each week a family that wants to adopt a dog is introduced to four canine candidates and then goes through a classic reality-TV voting/elimination/tearful-farewell (times 3)/ecstatic-finale arc. What a concept.


Day 8: Stockholm (Gamla Stan, the Old Town)

We are finally starting to get the hang of this drive-on-the-right thing, to the extent that today we confidently ventured into the middle suburbs of Stockholm to find a metro station and its associated nearby car park. It’s a pity that the operations of the automatic petrol station pumps on the way, and the car park ticket machine on arrival, were both a mystery even to the locals whom we ask for help – so what hope did we have? The metro system (”T-bana”), on the other hand, is as easy and smooth as it should be, except that, oddly, you can’t buy tickets at the station - you need to go to the 7-11 next door.

We spent the day around the “Old Town” area of this beautiful, water-framed city, It is clearly the tourist centre of Stockholm, and there is no doubt we were lucky to be there out of the high season – no crowds to contend with. It’s a great place simply to wander aimlessly, tripping over the cobbles in narrow streets, venturing into the occasional tiny shop and watching other tourists. We witnessed the changing of the guard at the old Palace (a spectacle on a rather smaller scale than that of Buckingham), then took a tour of its apartments and treasures. There are several palaces around Stockholm – it’s a bit hard to keep up, actually. They seem to like their Royals here.

After taking the obligatory photo in Stockholm’s narrowest street and finding some extremely expensive shops ($180 beanie, anyone?) we packed up our weary legs and headed home (Helen’s knee is feeling the pinch, but it’s doing a lot more miles than the old one would’ve). The ferry across to the island runs every half-hour, and we have been lucky two nights in a row to just catch it in time.

(More photos - scroll right to bottom)

---