Hotel Villa Borgen Visby

I am on the beautiful island of Gotland, in the Baltic Sea, east of the Swedish mainland. I flew into Stockholm and took several buses and trains to arrive at the ferry harbor of Nynäshamn. The ferry departed at 9pm and took 3 hours to reach Visby, the main town of Gotland. There were about 600 passengers on the ferry, about one third of the number in July when tourism is at its peak. I was met at the terminal by my friend Lena Lager, and a former Innisfree volunteer from 1999. She came ...

We woke up to sunny, cloudless skies on a day that was a touch on the hot side. I was pleased to learn that somewhere between Nynäshamn the previous afternoon and the hostel this morning I had lost my hairbrush. Having long, frizzy hair and no hairbrush is a bad combination for me. After breakfast we made a special stop at Åléns to pick up a brush that I desperately needed.

We wandered down to the tourist information and made our tenative ...

... added an additional display about the Finnish-Swedish war that took place at some point, I didn't learn much because all of the descriptions for everything were in Swedish and Finnish only. It is a really interesting museum though, with lots of really interesting things from Swedens history, including the very tattered 400 year old stuffed horse.

Then came the Tre Kronor museum, named after the old version of the castle that used to stand where the current one is ...

... it seems that they don't like to refrigerate anything too much. Even the sodas and beer we buy at our different stops aren't terribly cold. I don't get it, but oh well. One of the things we still have going for us is that we've been able to do laundry at both of our stops so far, so as we head to Copenhagen, we are pretty much caught up on that. Copenhagen is a much different kind of place, so we'll see what we have available to us there.

... It didn't take long and they were making their parents gasp and plead that they return to the safety of the beach. Once we left, we found a little restaurang (restaurant) just a few KM down the road. We hit the jackpot and had a great dinner.

Since Todd & I had so much time in the car today we, of course, discussed if the 70% income tax they pay here is worth it? Speaking strictly of what we've seen... the roads are rare, narrow, a ...

... and got in cars to head down to Nasudden to see the wind farms. The area had over 100 turbines of all different sizes. It had been there since 1983 when the country started doing tests to see how effective wind turbines were in producing energy. We also learned that Sweden is building a large wind farm in the sea between Denmark and Sweden. That area should produce enough energy to light 60,000 ...

... during summer. I have been told Gotland is to young Swedes what Ibiza is to Brits, but as it was out of season we didn't really see much of this party atmosphere. There were a heap of weird looking people though in overalls of different colours which were covered in patches. When we asked someone who they were all he said was 'students', well they looked strange. Visby was lovely, it is a mix of old and new, with ruins of 13th century churches next door to modern buildings, and ...

... the lake in the early afternoon and rode around until we could find a campsite in the woods that was far away from everyone. There are many areas to camp and we found a great one that was away from everything. We then walked through the bush to see if we could get to the lake but the long swampy field in front of us prevented us from getting too close. We then went back to the camp and had a small fire and some food before having some ...

After a short layover in Arlanda, I flew a little puddlejumper tubroprop to the island of Gotland where my friends Eric and Navin where waiting for me. The capital of Gotland is a town called Visby. Originally a Viking settlement, it later became a member of the Hanseatic League and to this day retains much of its historic feel; So much so that UNESCO has deemed the entire walled town a World Heritage site. Visby is also known as one of the happening places for ...

Well I was busy working at the farm last week again, but this week I am home, bored, with nothing to do again. The peak of lambing has come and gone and there is little extra work to do, which means the hired guy out at the farm can handle it all by himself again. Oh well. Only one month until I start my real job at the restaurant. Had a quiet weekend ...