Ibis Karlstad City

... little bubba is teething like no tomorrow. But overall he has been such a great little baby to travel with. He seems to like the van and knows that despite an initial grizzle when he sits in his car seat that its time to sleep. He is one happy camper baby! :) <br><br>To finish the day sat beside our van with our sleeping baby and supping on a 7% beer, looking out over the lake with a nice sunset, we think we heard a woodpecker high up in the pine trees. Off to give the little one a bath.

After a very cold night in the van with temperatures dropping to 10 degrees it did mean that the clear skies of the day before had brought with it a gorgeous sunrise with just a couple of clouds. Funny, I used to always struggle to get out of bed to check out sunrises, and now with Jasper its quite a regular occurence!<br><br>So after a lie in, we took in the serenity as you might say!Thats for you Sashy! The ...

... although I am not sure if this was the original intent of the old Swedish rock carver dudes or this is just done to make it look all the more spectacular. Funnily though the colour used is the same "Swedish Ochre" colour that is used to paint all rural buildings (houses, barns, etc). There was even a 40ft shipping container in Fiskebacksil that was disguised with wood panelling and corrigated iron roof that was painted in this Swedish Ochre to make it blend in. <br><br>The rock ...

Hej Hej,<br><br>Forget your summer plans to Southern Europe. Just let it go. Sweden is the place to visit! This is a gorgeous country with lots of water, rolling farmlands, forests, and wide open spaces. You can enjoy much more than pickled herring if it's not for you. You have to occasionally remember that winter is another animal, but for a summer trip, worth a visit. <br><br>We used Ryan Air to make it up here, and then headed to the town of ...

... is doing a good job telling me I have an hour before my train back to Norway. Also last night there was another Lene Marlin concert here in Karlstad (yes the reason I'm here but dont judge me. bah i dont care anyway, it was totally worth it). It was put on at short notice but was really amazing, she had a band behind her of at least 10 people including a string quartet, a drummer, and a percussionist. Then after the show I followed the Italian fanatics again and got to meet ...

... away on Friday - boring I know. Its really great here, everyone is happy and Swedish, unlike the grumps in Norway. There are cycle paths everywhere and it seems like everyone rides a bike even old people. I have visited some older areas with cobbled streets and cycled (I have hired a bike) out to a rune stone in a farmers field, which is just like a memorial thing that is ...

... to see, you can always find someplace new because the world is huge. As I said i've had the luck to see very many places in my life and i'm still just 19 years old. This year i've been to Dublin, Liverpool and London during spring. And the summer started off quite good as well as I went to Austria and Innsbruck with a friend and saw the Euro 2008, where we ...

19 minutes past midnight and we are leaving Karlstad by a bus that is taking us to Örebro, where we'll change to another bus that will take us to Stockholm Skavsta Airport in Nyköping. In about 17 hours we'll hopefully be in Innsbruck in some pub or fan-area where we can view the game between Sweden and Spain.

Note: More photos of Karlstad are located on our Smugmug page Ahhh Karlstad. A lovely little city in the middle of a lovely country. Our journey here was fairly uneventful thanks to instructions from our Swedish hosts and the abundance of English speakers in this part of the world. Somehow on our Seattle to Copenhagen flight we ended up in the with tons of legroom bulkhead seats and an adorable Danish flight attendant across ...

... come to think of it, this is the first time we had a safe in our rooms. As I wondered how could an advance country like Sweden have such problem, Amanda explained that the Swedes 'import' their thieves. LP highlighted this problem too. Was safe Scandinavia disappearing from this moment on? We will have to see. I became slightly paranoid, but it was after Amanda's narration of petty street crimes that I took out my switchblade that I always kept in my ...