Swedish sauna and sommerstuga sojourn
After having talked their ears off over the years about Sweden and how great it is and how everything cool comes from Sweden (IKEA, the Swedish Chef, Volvo etc...) we finally managed to get all of us on a plane there. This was our only actual vacation that we were taking while we were in Germany, a whole week off and it was a little scary that all of a sudden we were going to be in Sweden and if it turned out to be horrible then it was pretty much all my fault, seeing as how I am the past-president of the Swedish fanclub and it was my idea to go and visit while we were here. It was so close after all, how could we not go?
We landed in Arlanda airport to find some pretty interesting poster work in the arrivals terminal.
Capital of not just Sweden, but Scandinavia too! I wonder if the Norwegians know about this?
We picked up our hire car at the airport. No not a Volvo. It was looking like it was going to be a Toyota at one stage which would have been an absolute tragedy on a fairly cosmic scale, driving a Japanese car while in Sweden, home to Volvo and Saab. Luckily however we got to cruise out of the carpark and onto the highway to Nora in a Skoda Octavia station wagon which was huge and comfortable and fit our needs just perfectly and also happens to come from the Czech Republic. How often are you going to find one of those puppies in Australia or Canada? Hah!
A few hours later and a little(quite a lot actually) shopping at the local Willys saw us arriving on the dock at Nora. Lars arrived soon thereafter in Buster (the scissors boat - it's made by Fiskars!) to greet us and take us across the lake to Alntorps Ö where we were to spend the next couple of days.
Lars, Ruth & Rhett Enjoying a boat ride in Buster
Malou having a great time!
Lars and Malou, our hosts for our sommerstuga adventure and my neighbours in Malmö when I lived there back in 1988/9, were as lovely as always and made everyone feel immediately at home. They have recently bought a new sommerstuga for themselves on the island (the white house sommerstuga is shared with Lars' brother's family) and so are still in the process of getting it set up the way they want. The first thing that they upgraded about the land was to install a brand new sauna which was to become our favourite feature of Nora that week! The new cottage also meant that it wasn't quite set up right for the 5 of us so we spent our nights sleeping at the yellow house next to the minigolf course. The yellow house has been various things over the years, a restaurant, café, hotel, shop and is being renovated to be used as a youth hostel at the moment. They're working from the outside in so it looks lovely from the exterior and still needs a bit of TLC on the inside. We had it all to ourselves though and so Ruth, Rhett and Josie got one room, we got another and we had plenty of room to spread our luggage and stuff around. It also had running hot water, showers and toilets so that was a bonus too!
The yellow house, a place to lay our heads
We spent most of the days with Lars and Malou, chatting, catching up, practising my direly out of date Swedish and visiting Nora across the lake. The evening were spent eating delicious food prepared in the tiny little kitchen(the next big renovation project) and then having a nice strong Danish beer in the sauna.
Contemplating the sauna
The sauna is built right next to the lake with a good wide deck in front of it which provides the luxury of being able to get nice and hot in the sauna, jump in the lake to cool down (rather rapidly as the lake was pretty cold!) and then reenter the sauna to warm up again and repeat the cycle. The addition of Danish Harboe beer didn't hurt the equation at all. For Ruth, Rhett and Col who had previously never liked saunas at all, the Nora method of sauna going was a revelation! There's something uniquely special about the process that leaves you incredibly relaxed and happy at the end with a pleasant buzz all over your skin. We've decided that the first thing we are going to do upon getting back to Canada is source a Swedish sauana and build it down near the dock. You had to walk in to the lake in Nora as it's not very deep but imagine how fun it will be if you can jump in!
We had a fair bit of rain and cool weather while we were in Nora but it didn't dampen our spirits at all and we had a fantastic time there. One particularly cool day we got a tour of the Nora Railways Museum from Lars' brother Hans who is the chairman of the board of the museum. He took us through all of the various buildings that are housing the steam trains and workshops for the museum and all of the trains are still in full working order which is quite amazing. If I'd had a tripod and another 5 days I could have spent my entire trip in that museum taking photos of all the amazing equipment and machinery. You'll just have to be satisfied with this photoset that I took while we were there.
Henry the green engine
Another great adventure was going picking mushrooms with Malou. It was a quiet day for everyone and so Col and I joined Malou in a trip to her favourite chantarelle picking spot to see if we could find anything for dinner. We wandered the forest for hours, finally able to tune our eyes in to the particular shade of yellow that the chantarelles had and figuring out good places that they might be growing. It's only when you spend a lot of time in a forest looking intensely at the ground that you realise just how many different kinds of things are growing there. It's so much more than just the trees. We ended up with a pretty good haul and Col and I are now dedicated "kantarelle plocker" junkies, that's another thing we're going to have to figure out when we get home, is whether chantarelles grow in the forests in B.C....
We had a wonderful time in Nora and couldn't quite figure out why we were leaving when we piled back into the Skoda and set off for Stockholm. But that's another tale which I'll leave for later...
Beautiful Nora
The full photo set from our time in Nora can be found by clicking the title of this post or clicking here.
We landed in Arlanda airport to find some pretty interesting poster work in the arrivals terminal.
Capital of not just Sweden, but Scandinavia too! I wonder if the Norwegians know about this?
We picked up our hire car at the airport. No not a Volvo. It was looking like it was going to be a Toyota at one stage which would have been an absolute tragedy on a fairly cosmic scale, driving a Japanese car while in Sweden, home to Volvo and Saab. Luckily however we got to cruise out of the carpark and onto the highway to Nora in a Skoda Octavia station wagon which was huge and comfortable and fit our needs just perfectly and also happens to come from the Czech Republic. How often are you going to find one of those puppies in Australia or Canada? Hah!
A few hours later and a little(quite a lot actually) shopping at the local Willys saw us arriving on the dock at Nora. Lars arrived soon thereafter in Buster (the scissors boat - it's made by Fiskars!) to greet us and take us across the lake to Alntorps Ö where we were to spend the next couple of days.
Lars, Ruth & Rhett Enjoying a boat ride in Buster
Malou having a great time!
Lars and Malou, our hosts for our sommerstuga adventure and my neighbours in Malmö when I lived there back in 1988/9, were as lovely as always and made everyone feel immediately at home. They have recently bought a new sommerstuga for themselves on the island (the white house sommerstuga is shared with Lars' brother's family) and so are still in the process of getting it set up the way they want. The first thing that they upgraded about the land was to install a brand new sauna which was to become our favourite feature of Nora that week! The new cottage also meant that it wasn't quite set up right for the 5 of us so we spent our nights sleeping at the yellow house next to the minigolf course. The yellow house has been various things over the years, a restaurant, café, hotel, shop and is being renovated to be used as a youth hostel at the moment. They're working from the outside in so it looks lovely from the exterior and still needs a bit of TLC on the inside. We had it all to ourselves though and so Ruth, Rhett and Josie got one room, we got another and we had plenty of room to spread our luggage and stuff around. It also had running hot water, showers and toilets so that was a bonus too!
The yellow house, a place to lay our heads
We spent most of the days with Lars and Malou, chatting, catching up, practising my direly out of date Swedish and visiting Nora across the lake. The evening were spent eating delicious food prepared in the tiny little kitchen(the next big renovation project) and then having a nice strong Danish beer in the sauna.
Contemplating the sauna
The sauna is built right next to the lake with a good wide deck in front of it which provides the luxury of being able to get nice and hot in the sauna, jump in the lake to cool down (rather rapidly as the lake was pretty cold!) and then reenter the sauna to warm up again and repeat the cycle. The addition of Danish Harboe beer didn't hurt the equation at all. For Ruth, Rhett and Col who had previously never liked saunas at all, the Nora method of sauna going was a revelation! There's something uniquely special about the process that leaves you incredibly relaxed and happy at the end with a pleasant buzz all over your skin. We've decided that the first thing we are going to do upon getting back to Canada is source a Swedish sauana and build it down near the dock. You had to walk in to the lake in Nora as it's not very deep but imagine how fun it will be if you can jump in!
We had a fair bit of rain and cool weather while we were in Nora but it didn't dampen our spirits at all and we had a fantastic time there. One particularly cool day we got a tour of the Nora Railways Museum from Lars' brother Hans who is the chairman of the board of the museum. He took us through all of the various buildings that are housing the steam trains and workshops for the museum and all of the trains are still in full working order which is quite amazing. If I'd had a tripod and another 5 days I could have spent my entire trip in that museum taking photos of all the amazing equipment and machinery. You'll just have to be satisfied with this photoset that I took while we were there.
Henry the green engine
Another great adventure was going picking mushrooms with Malou. It was a quiet day for everyone and so Col and I joined Malou in a trip to her favourite chantarelle picking spot to see if we could find anything for dinner. We wandered the forest for hours, finally able to tune our eyes in to the particular shade of yellow that the chantarelles had and figuring out good places that they might be growing. It's only when you spend a lot of time in a forest looking intensely at the ground that you realise just how many different kinds of things are growing there. It's so much more than just the trees. We ended up with a pretty good haul and Col and I are now dedicated "kantarelle plocker" junkies, that's another thing we're going to have to figure out when we get home, is whether chantarelles grow in the forests in B.C....
We had a wonderful time in Nora and couldn't quite figure out why we were leaving when we piled back into the Skoda and set off for Stockholm. But that's another tale which I'll leave for later...
Beautiful Nora
The full photo set from our time in Nora can be found by clicking the title of this post or clicking here.
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