Suderbys Herrgard Visby

... held early August of every year.

It has been a very relaxing time here. Coming from Brussels and Berlin, I immediately felt calm and stress-free when I saw the sea. This is a very beautiful place and I highly recommend it for a relaxing vacation. It does take some effort to get here tho. I have had a wonderful time visiting with Lena; riding bikes, sharing meals, talking about our lives/parents/children/lovelives,having coffee, and swimming in the sea. Tusen takk. (I know it's ...

... surrounding city. I found the inside a little less impressive than the outside. There were a few sparse decorations, but the inside was dominated with a display tying together the bible and bullying. I think that maybe if I was a little more of a religious person, it would have meant more, but all I saw were just a bunch of pictures of little children getting bullied.

Then we decided to go see some of the rest of the ruins in the rest of the ...

... of fun.

Then it was finally time to catch the bus to Nynäshamn and a short bus ride later we were on the boat and ready to go to Gotland. The sea was kind of rough on the way there, making the boat kind of shaky, to the point where it was kind of hard to walk around. I was a little confused watching the safety video, it said that the alarm that would go off in case of emergency would consist of seven short and one long. All I could think was "could you possibly ...

... and mini-golf, the kids were thoroughly spoiled and exhausted for the day, the sign of a good vacation stop. We finished off the evening by walking down to the shoreline to throw some rocks into the Baltic Sea and see if we can spot some passing ships. What a great day! Unfortunately, the ferry leaves at 7:20 tomorrow morning, so we need to pack things up tonight and set the alarm for 5 am. :(

Tomorrow is the longest travel day of our ...

... use some repair. There are no shoulders and the trees come right up next to the road. They don't believe in utilizing street lights or stop lights, just lots of roundabouts and add-on fog lamps. Oh, and no police - anywhere... except the one that gave Todd a parking ticket in Kalmar. At least that's what we think it is. Funny how Todd forgot to blog about that, eh?

We also just wanted to add that we miss you and hope everyone is doing well!

Today we got an early start on our day, which felt like a big change from the weekend. We ate, changed, and headed off to the airport in Bromma to catch our flight to Gotland. Gotland is an island off the east coast of Sweden. It is well known as the home to some Astrid Lindgren books, as housing the medieval city of Visby, and as home to a large wind farm called Nasudden. We arrived in Visby around ...

... park land. The old wall is fairly well intact around the city and looks great. We were told to visit the top of the island where a smaller island called Faro is located, this was said to have a spectacular coast line. A little car ferry took you over the small gap of water, and after following a dirt track for 15mins we ended up at a nice little wooded area where we decided to camp for the night. The coast is unique here due to the rock formations all along it. I think they were ...

... and a fun night. We awoke the next morning and packed up our camp again so we could ride back to town and return our rental bikes. It was an uneventful ride back and old poppy didn't have any more issues. We arrived just in time to miss the ferry to Nyashamn. We missed it by about 10 minutes but there was a ferry to Oskarshamn leaving in about an hour so we will get on that one and then try and figure our way back to Stockholm from there.

... Friday night we went for pizza and then came back to our place and played some poker. Saturday after work, Mattias and I went up to Stenkyrka and visited Andreas and met his girlfriend Frida. Andreas's sister prepared supper for us and then we watched movies. Sunday was Mother's Day here, so Mattias, his family and I went into town to have lunch with Lena, who is still in the hospital. Hopefully she will be able to come home this week.

... at a fancy restaurant. It was a meal on the Gotlands Menu, which was a 3 course meal picked by the restaurant. It was cool though, because it was all very Gotlandic dishes, like smoked salmon, lamb filets, rosemary potato gratin, and saffron pankcakes with salmbar jam. Then we headed back to Desiree and Styrbjorns and played some cards. A very relaxing weekend, which was good after our party last weekend!