So long sweet Solna

I've moved again!

So goodbye to Solna, it has been lovely living there. I will miss the lake, and the Film Staden with its sushi, and my little flat, and most of all the hare chums.

But now onwards to Bromma! With Misha, and an epic but occasionally glorious cycle to get to KI. Photos of the new place coming soon, when it is not completely overrun with my bags and boxes, and I've eaten something that is not a banana...

Hejdå!

Laura x

Word for the day - löpning, for speedy Mutsaers!

Hej hej!

First off congratulations speedy Mutsaers! Chantal ran a half marathon in two hours and four minutes, woooooooo!

I have battered myself in a somewhat less extreme way this weekend. It's been splendid sunshine here as well as there, so I have been outside and covered in factor 50 sun cream the whole time. The less pasty KI scientists are amazed that the factors even go up to 50, but it's not stopping my face from going rosy under the eyes.

Yesterday (Saturday) I had a delightful laundry / Skype morning  - two of my favourite things! Then went off to join up the different bits of the city on my bike. I was out and about for four hours and made it from the north of Stockholm right to the east of Djurgården where I was impeded by water, as seems to happen here a lot. Everyone says it, but there is a lot of water in this city. I wasn't really struck by it in March, but that could have been because it was all FROZEN.

During this epic trip I had a few stops. The first was at the saluhall (food hall) in Östermalm (Morningside), which EM informs me has been featured on Jamie Oliver.

Mmmm, I got some of this brie for dinner. It was delicious.

Un-frozen fruit! Mad expensive though, 50p per strawberry.

It was fairly impressive, if you are in to cheese, fruit and pork. Luckily I tick two of those three boxes so I was pleased.

The next stop was crossing on to Djurgården, where my legs were getting tired and I wished I had a boat like these peeps:

This is Jenny Lund. She lives on Djurgården, and Jenny H wanted a photo of her when she was here, but Jenny Lund is exceptionally popular and is always surrounded by people. I cleverly avoided them here, although there is a man hidden  directly behind her.

On my way home I left the glory of the urban park for the EXTREMELY busy Norrmalm. Here I accidently ran into the side of a car and bent it's wing mirror right back. I was taking off from a standstill in way too high a gear and might have lost control for a bit. Unluckily, the owner was in the car, and sitting on the left, so right next to me as I careered into his vehicle. Luckily, I put the mirror back and he didn't seem to mind so much. In my defence, I was at a standstill because he had parked in the bike lane.

Made it home shattered and ate my brie.

Today I was thinking I might take it easy after yesterday's madness, but instead I went kayaking with some Italian peeps from KI. We went right through the middle of town and back, zigzagging the entire way and making speedboats quite cross, because we never quite got the hang of steering. We even got to sunbathe on a jetty, and swim! (Just me!) It was FREEZING! This could be because two months ago, the water I was swimming in looked like this:

 Today, it looked like this instead:

I only managed to jump off the jetty and swim about 100m to a place where I could climb out, and Giada had been a wonder and walked along with my towel. She was thinking I might be cold; I was more worried about walking past the hundreds of sunbathers in my bikini. Though everyone else was topless so I probably shouldn't have bothered worrying.

Got completely lost on my way home, which was part exasperating, part funny and part over sun-exposurey. I spent about 40 minutes cycling round under flyovers which I couldn't get on to, and didn't want to be on, but which I KNEW went to KI, before finding myself back at the start point. When I finally made it to KI I decided to utilise the tyre-pump station to make the last 3km of cycling a little bit easier, but instead let all the air out of my tyre and couldn't re-fill it. So I had to push my bike for the last half an hour.

Now I am packing my life up again for the second move in May! But thinking I might go and get some pad thai for a break...

Hope you guys have enjoyed your sunshiny weekends!
Byeloveyoubye,
Laura
x

Word for the day - kackerlacka, in honour of Rochey's birthday

Hej chums,

Only a quick post today since I am about to faceplant on to the keyboard! First off, happy birthday Rochey! I hope your birthday was a splendid as your good self.

There are lilacs everywhere at the moment, it smells amazing. I went to the lake again this evening and the air is all perfumed and warm. And there were piles of goslings and three hot air balloons. Wonders upon wonders!

This'll be why it is called waterlily round here.

Gosling pile!

How does one get a ride in one of these delights?

I've also been having some tourist grocery confusion and a lot of frozen fruit, but maybe that is a story for another day when I have taken my camera to ICA. Pronounced all as one word, apparently, I caused much hillarity by calling it I.C.A. yesterday. Good job I haven't actually tried any Swedish yet. There is a road near my house called Frösundaleden, which in my head is always refered to as 'Frosty-man', not sure how that would go down! Letting the crazy out a little at a time.

God natt!
Laura
x

Guest blogger - JH!

HIYA! I am in Stockholm and have had the most perfect weekend imaginable (seriously- everything about it has been ideal!) I arrived to door to door service supervised by wolf, Laura and Neil and was provided with pick and mix on the way. The next day we awoke to glorious weather and spent the day admiring superb tulips, ambling through parks at a goslings pace (we measured ourselves against some lovely goslings but when we were distracted by being statues they overtook us), picknicking on a dandelion populated meadow, drinking pefect hot chocolate and eating meatballs with lingonberry sauce (that was just me).

Thoughtful statue...

Gosling speed!

All statues need a rest...

This is a corner of a field- beautiful fact

Excitedly waiting for the boat- perfect way to travel as there is a lot of water (yes Neil I do have a talent for stating the obvious :)

The next day was even more glouriously sunny and so, after getting a taste for posing like a statue, we decided to be some famous statues. We even persuaded the dark Munro to join in with our statuesque shennanigans...

An astounding representation of Pegasus and a flying man!

Uncanny!

Beautiful!

Hairs wanting to be dragons!

Bench intact :)

'The Sisters'

You may call it nonsense... I call it inspired :) Thanks for a PERFECT long weekend in Stockholm chums!

That is either a most brilliant statue pose or a drunk falling off a bench...

The Dark Munro abroad

First impressions of Sweden: trees, water and shared toilets. Turns out the shared toilets were only a feature at Skavsta Airport (that's Ryanair for you...) but the other two continued to be higher visible elsewhere. Particularly the trees, which I am now a big fan of and have excessive photographic evidence to prove this.

Tree

(I am struggling hugely with Laura's MacBook to write this by the way...)

I arrived at T. Centralen at about 11:30 and, having got up at 4am to catch the flight out, the obvious thing to do was spend the next five hours (longer than I had slept the night before) walking the streets of Stockholm, meaning that by the time I met up with Laura (bit of a mess that one - turns out there are two exits from her Tunelbana stop and one of them throws you out in the middle of a housing estate miles from the one I was supposed to come out), I had seen more of the city than she had. I was also somewhat famished as I had been too stingy to cough up the excessive dough for sustenance during my wanders.

Although I am definitely a huge fan of Stockholm now, there seem to be concerns all round that I have been far less smitten by the 'local attractions' than that Nosh. Possibly because I've spent most of my time here taking pictures of trees. Or cars. Never have I seen so many American muscle cars (apart from in America, obvs), and even I am getting a bit fed up with the number of times I've pointed out yet another Harley. I suspect it's partly to do with the odd pricing balance here - filling up a car is significantly cheaper than in the UK, but eating out for lunch every day would bankrupt you!

Just to be sure...

Anyway, Jen has now fallen asleep waiting for me to write this and it is blazing sunshine outside (increasingly amazing weather since we got here by the way!) so I will part with a few more photos and leave Jen to fill in the blanks later on. Many thanks to Laura for her hospitality - a great long weekend and looking forward to the next one!

Second favourite church but lovely little quiet churchyard

More trees

Crazy loud birds at sunset near Laura's flat

Awesome car - check out the stickers

Favourite church - oldest in Stockholm

The Hand of God

Visitors!

Hej hej,

I've had some visitors this weekend! They will be guest blogging over the next day or two, so I wont tred on their blogging toes and tell you what we did, but suffice to say there was some sunshine, and there were some statues, so all was well.

Hejdå!

Laura x

Word for the day - skata

'Thirty seven for...?' by LottieAlone

I have never seen so many magpies in one city. Stockholm, I salute you. Almost continuously, in a superstitious way.

Magpie M is for...Alphabet D... elizaBcrafts $3.00	Hello Magpie blackoutwell $12.00	Magpie Keyring / Keychain clairehartigan $6.50	This Bird is a Thief 5 x 7 p... thirteenthstor... $18.00
Two for Joy - A4 Art print Rebekahleigh $17.00	MAGPIE Painting - Print take... eastwitching $20.00	She Waits - open edition pri... daniellebarlow... $14.00	American Magpie 1964 Vintage... mysunshinevint... $20.00
Magpie. A4 Black & White Pr... HardcoreDoodli... $12.00	Another Little Bird, Rubber ... ttyr $12.00	1896 Antique BiRD EGGS Chrom... BlastsFromTheP... $18.75	Two for Joy Magpie Original ... mangleprints $20.00
Large 2 Sided 1981 Vintage A... mysunshinevint... $12.00	Good Morning Mister Magpie n... starsNscars $12.00	Logo Design / Development by... YellowMagpie $75.00	Magpie Cat Original Paintin... irinashop $110.00

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Seriously. They are almost everywhere. I am saluting so much it is beginning to look like a nervous twitch, and talking to myself almost continuously when I am outside. I am not even sure if they have this superstition in Sweden. Nor am I sure of the exact rules when it comes to seeing magpies in very quick succession. Do they count as many many individual ones, and therefore portent months of doom? Or are they multiples, meaning much joy and letters and something betters? Magpie minefield. x