Relaxing in Sweden

We just got back from visiting our good friends Kim and Aaron in Sweden for two weeks. We found great deals on flights in the fall, and thought it'd be a great chance to spend some time with them. We didn't have much planned ahead of time, but found some very fun things to do, as well as just relaxing and spending quality time together. And of course enjoying great food, as they are both great cooks! I can't be held responsible if all the food photos make you hungry though!

The first day I went with Kim to her friends house for a crafty afternoon. We worked together to make a pillow cover for Kim! 

While we were crafting, the boys made dinner - Spatchcocked chicken with mushroom and cheese topped polenta and salad. Simply delicious! 

And a trip to Sweden wouldn't be complete without going to Ikea! Their decorations were pretty cute! 

So we stopped by for a buffet breakfast! 

 

We went to a Bandy game, which is like a combination of hockey and soccer with a few field hockey elements thrown in, played on a big outdoor skating rink. It was quite entertaining!

We ventured into Stockholm. Jerome led us to this cool Saluhall. 

Inside they have all sorts of fancy food stalls with seafood, cheeses, charcuteries, etc. We just admired and didn't sample anything.

Next we played this really cool game called Room Escape which is a puzzle game with a story where you are in a room and have to use all the clues and objects around you in clever ways to solve the riddle and win the game. We managed to finished with just a few minutes to spare! It was a ton of fun, and if you're in a city that has a Room Escape game, I'd highly recommend it! 

We met up with Aaron who had to work late, and then went for dinner with their friends Patrick and Natalie, along with two of their houseguests. We had a tasty dinner of savoury crepes, where we were all to hungry to take photos. 

And then we went to this basement bar that is basically also a giant arcade, with foosball, airhockey, darts, pinball machines, shuffleboard courts and a bunch of other games! We all had a great time! 

For the weekend, we voted to drive 3-4 hours north of Uppsala and rent a small cabin to hangout for the weekend. It was really beautiful and snowy. 

We spent our time between cooking, walking outside and playing games. Kim and Aaron made our first delicious meal. Coconut poached salmon, pea and potato cakes with coconut milk sauce and a cucumber salad

We made sure we had enough candy to last us the whole weekend - about 1.25kg worth!

Aaron kept the wood stove stoked and roaring all weekend keeping us warm and cozy. 

We especially appreciated the fire after our long snowy walks to the lake! 

I was in charge of lunch on Saturday, so I made sweet potato chipotle soup with jalepeno cheese scones. 

We walked to the little town nearby. To get there we crossed a big lake on a bridge and saw quite a few people out ice fishing for the afternoon. 

For dinner Jerome and I worked together to make our signature fajitas.

And we played lots and lots of games. We had brought 5 games with us, and had a tournament. Looks like Jerome must have just won this one! Kim and Aaron tied for the tournament winners. But overall in the trip Kim and I were victorious in our Tichu tournament! 

Jerome spent Sunday morning making us Knishes! 

They turned out really well, and were super tasty! I'm hoping he'll make them again sometime!

The big attraction near to us was Tomteland - or Santaland. It wasn't really what we were looking for on our weekend getaway, but we drove by to see it anyways. 

We were all pretty full of all the good food, so we had a simple salad and garlic bread for dinner. But we were treated to Kim's homemade Banana cream pie for dessert! 

Monday morning we reluctantly left our cozy cabin and drove back so that Kim and Aaron could get back to work. 

We spent the next day walking around Uppsala and checking out all the cute little shops around. Kim and Aaron made a great lamb sausage stew, served in a bowl surrounded with homemade hummus and homemade naan! It was really impressive and tasty! 

Jerome and I went back to Stockholm to stay over and explore some more. We stayed in the Old Town Lodge in their cubicle dormitory. Which was quite a fun experience. You're in a tiny cubicle with curtained walls that don't go to the ceiling. We were a worried it would be quite loud, but it was actually pretty quiet - except our neighbour who ate a Pringle impressively loudly every few minutes for a while! We enjoyed the location right in the middle of the old town which is really pretty and has lots of small shops, and the Royal Palace. We even saw the changing of the guard and visited the armory. 

Aside from the little shops around town we also stopped in the Stockhom Cathedral that had this amazing sculpture! We forgot to take pictures, but we got our fill of traditional Swedish meatballs at a neat place called Meatballs for the People. And had a fun dinner at the Hairy Pig deli just around the corner from our hostel. They make all their own sausages. 

We were back at Kim's in time to have one last dinner together. She and Aaron made us potato "nachos" we were a bit skeptical when they told is it involved neither cheese, nor salsa, but we were happily surprised at the tasty pile of deliciousness! 

And thus with sadness, our two weeks of food, friends and fun was over. But hopefully it won't be too long before we'll be able to get together and do it all over again! 

Sweden, London and Home Again!!

Click here to see our entire Sweden, London and Home Again Album

Finally we have arrived at the final post about our trip last year. It seems to have taken me almost exactly a year since we returned to get them all done. But I hope you've enjoyed them despite the lag. I sometimes still can't believe that we were lucky enough to have the opportunity to go on such a grand adventure. Almost everyday I remember some part of it, and cherish the memories. We got to see so many interesting places, and meet up with friends and family along the way! Thanks to all of you who gave us encouragement, suggestions, a place to stay, or met up with us!

We left off in Barcelona, where we caught a flight to Sweden. It wasn't on our original itinerary, but while we were in Morocco, we got an email from Kim, telling us that she would be arriving to live in Sweden about a week before our flights home.  So we flew from Barcelona to Stockholm on November 1st of last year, arriving at the airport only and hour after Kim! Aaron had already been there for a while, and so picked us all up and took us to the apartment, where much catching up and eating and merriment began. 

The next day after an excellent homemade breakfast, Aaron took us all on a tour of Uppsala where they are living. We visited a really interesting church which had a unique Scandinavian feel to it. There was wall paper, sculptures, logs of carved wood, and ornate crests like this one. 

The town was really interesting, with lots of neat little shops and stuff. We picked up food for dinner at a farmer's market, had an afternoon snack and coffee at a little shop, and then had our mental clocks thrown into confusion when the sun started setting around 3:30 in the afternoon! 

That evening we had another great meal of reindeer sliders and a veggie mix from the farmer's market. We tried Fishshot (a liquor that tastes like menthol), which I did not enjoy at all... And we spent the evening in the apartment's sauna, experiencing the fun that has to offer, over beers and tales of our adventures. 

The next morning we took a train to Stockholm to stay for a few days. We played many games of Tichu on the train. We arrived at a little hotel just outside of the city, dropped our stuff off, and took another train into Stockholm itself. 

On the recommendation of one of Kim and Aaron's friends we had dinner at Bla Dorren, which was really tasty and fun. They had homemade schnapps there in lots of different flavours which was really cool. We tried quite a few of them, my favourite being the horseradish one, that I was jokingly dared to try! The downside, was that the price ended up being by the ounce, not the glass as we had thought, so they weren't quite as awesomely cheap as we originally thought. The food was great too, we all had tasty things, Jerome opted for the very traditional Swedish meatballs with lingonberries! 

The following day we explored some more, and went to the Vasa Museum. It was really interesting. It contains a ship that sank in the 1600's on her maiden voyage, but that was preserved because of the salt water and cold temperature. They were able to salvage it in immaculate condition, and study why it sank so quickly. One of the interesting things about it, was that the two halves of the ship were made by different groups, who each had a slightly different measuring system, so the two halves were different lengths! If you're in Stockholm it is worth the trip. It is one of the few museums I've gone to where I've read every single panel of text because it was so well put together, and the story was told in such an interesting way. 

For dinner we went to a bar recommended to us by the bartender the night before. They had a huge beer selection. We were lucky and got the last table for dinner! We tried all sorts of beers, and they had excellent buckets of mussels. We were about to head out, when we realized the stage was all set up for live music, and so decided to see what it was all about. Turns out Chip Taylor was playing. We weren't really sure who he was at first, but turns out he wrote Angel of the Morning, and Wild Thing, so it was pretty cool. 

 The next day we headed back to Uppsala, and just hung out with Sven the cat, made and ate some food and played games. Much fun was had by all. Jerome also made a friend out of Tomtar!

We said our goodbyes to Kim and Aaron and headed back to London for a few days before flying home.  And we had to take a picture of the giant Ikea we saw on the way to the airport. 

We arrived in London, and made our way to our Airbnb place. It was a room in an interesting housing complex known as Peabody houses. Our host was very nice, and gave us a cup of tea upon arriving. We had made arrangements to meet up with some of my friends from school, so we headed out, taking a bunch of cool night shots of the City along the way. 

We met with Christianne and Dave at the Anchor and Hope and had a great dinner with them, catching up on old times, and their adventures living in London for a year.

The next day we spent buying tea. We went back to Twinings and Harrods to get tea that we'd made notes we liked 3 months ago. That night we had an exciting event that we'd been looking forward to for weeks. Jerome happened to find a dinner experience based on Fawlty Towers which is one of our favourite shows. It was amazing and hilarious! Three actors portrayed Basil, Cybil and Manuel, and they recreated the highlights of the show while interacting with all the diners. The lady next to us got false teeth in her soup, and Manuel's "pet hamster" got away in the room. It was quite wonderful. Here's the link to the video Jerome took of part of it.

The next day we turned in our Oyster cards, took a last look around London and grabbed a train to visit and stay over at Jerome's cousins house. His Aunt Kat and Uncle John picked us up and brought us to their daughter Joelle's house. I got to meet Joelle and her sister Lisa and all their children for the first time. We had a great dinner all together and had lots of fun playing with Susie, Paige and Lukas and got to briefly say hi to Emily who was off to Brownies. It was a bit of a whirlwind stay as we had to leave the next morning. But it was wonderful for me to meet all these cousins I'd heard so much about and for Jerome to get to see them again. In the morning we said goodbye to everyone, Kat and John took us to the airport which was fairly nearby. On the way though, they took us to get a famous British Christmas Pudding to bring home for Christmas! 

The flight home was long, but direct. We took an interesting arc over the Greenland and the Canadian Arctic and saw some interesting scenery there. We spent the flight making our last journal entries, and talking about what our favourite things were. Our path took us right over the Golden Gate Bridge, so we snagged this one last picture just before we landed. We arrived home on Friday afternoon, spent the weekend unpacking and recuperating, and then headed back to work and reality on Monday! I really hope you've enjoyed hearing about our great adventure, we've appreciated all the comments and encouragement we've gotten along the way and enjoyed sharing it with you. 

In case you missed it, here is a post about our packing list and what we brought home. 

And here is one that answers some of the frequently asked questions about our trip. 

Click here to see our entire Sweden, London and Home Again Album

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