Alla inlägg under september 2013
We had a very nice adventurous day, and are now parked at the most southern tip of the island. Unfortunatley not very good connection, and I do have some stuff to tell, but Mom don't feel like helping me, (she's in the middle of a really good book) This video is all from me today................wet kisses.
Waking up to a rainy chilly day, good thing Adrienne has heat, and a roof to keep us dry. At the moment we are at Sweden's second largest island called Öland. We got here over a long bridge, that was inaugurated September 1972. The bridge is almost 4 miles long and have a clearance of 118 ft..
But now I’m getting ahead of myself, last night we stayed at the harbor on the main land. We took a long walk to explore the grounds of the castle where one of the most significant political events took place in 1397.
It was The Kalmar union which was the personal union between the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Also included was Finland that was a part of Sweden (until 1809) Iceland, Greenland, the Faroes and the Shetland archipelago, belonging to Norway, meaning that the union encompassed all of the Nordic countries.
The union’s centre of power was located in Denmark, but all the countries were principally ruled according to their own laws and traditions. The union was, with short breaks, maintained from 1397 to 1448. Following this, only the personal union with Norway – with a few interruptions – remained in effect (until 1814), while the Danish kings only managed to rule in Sweden for brief periods until Sweden definitively seceded by proclaiming Gustav Vasa king of Sweden in 1523
a real draw bridge and a moat................so much exciting stuff to explore, sure wish that stupid lead could come off for good............love the canons...........yeah Mom says, if one of those would go boom, you go boom under your tail............don’t embarrass me I say.....
On the way out these wooden people were standing, not sure what their purpose was, other than decoration
in the middle of all this historic interesting well build stuff, some new fancy architect has put up this black ugly cube ............ Mom hates it, and I tend to agree
this is one strange looking tree.................
this town had palm trees, planted in pots so they can be moved indoors for the winter month. Makes me long for my Florida home and real heat
I had no clue chestnuts grew in clusters like this ? and they have tails ?
This is a memorial statue of Kalmar Nyckel that was constructed in about 1625 and was of a design called a pinnace. The ship was named after the city of Kalmar, which purchased the ship in 1628 as its contribution to the Royal Swedish Navy. When Sweden decided to establish a trading colony in the New World the Kalmar Nyckel was chosen for the voyage, and sailed up Delaware river to Wilmington.
The ships sailed from Gothenburg in December 1637, but encountered a severe storm in the North Sea and had to divert to the Netherlands for repairs. They departed on New Year's Day 1638, arriving in North America in March 1638.
A second voyage, which departed on February 7, 1640, and arrived at Fort Christina on April 17, brought additional settlers for New Sweden. Kalmar Nyckel made four successive round trips from Sweden, a record unchallenged by any other colonial vessel. She later served the Royal Swedish Navy in the Swedish-Danish War, then was used as a merchant ship. She was lost at sea in the late 17th century. There are conflicting reports on where she was lost. One says she sank off the coast of the city of Kalmar, while another says she was lost in the North Sea.
In 1986, a group of citizens of Wilmington, Delaware, established the Kalmar Nyckel Foundation, whose primary source of funding is from the taxpayers , plus donations from corporations and individuals. The foundation designed, built, and launched a replica of the Kalmar Nyckel. The modern ship, designed by naval architects Thomas C Gillmer, Melbourne Smith, Joel Welter, and Ken Court, was built at a shipyard in Wilmington on the Christina River near the original 1638 Swedish settlers' landing site at Fort Christina. She was launched on September 28, 1997, and commissioned on May 9, 1998. The re-creation measures 94 feet (29 m) on deck and 131 feet (40 m) overall, with a 25-foot (7.6 m) beam, a 12-foot (3.7 m) draft, and a displacementt of 300 tons.
Mom boarded her at a tall ship regatta in New York, and at the time not all the wood carvings weren’t finished still very impressive..............this is a borrowed picture of the replica
Once again we were up early watching the hustle in the harbour as people were heading for work. After a short bathroom run, we made it over the bridge to yet another castle, but I'll tell you more about that tomorrow........
wet kisses to you all................miss you..................
We’re still heading south and Mom had planned to visit a large RV and camping store, but when we got there it was closed. On the gate was a note that it was closed because of a giant convention in a different town called Jönköping. That’s a town located at the most southern tip of lake Vänern................Mom said the road to get there is real pretty, so off we went.
We passed the town where these planes are made.............
long wide roads that go on forever and ever ............boooring...............Adrienne have been behaving like a real lady all along.
As usual Mom forgets to calculate how far it is, so we were driving for a very long time, and it was getting dark..........( how much pretty roads do you see in the dark ?) We stopped in the town right before where we were going, and lo and behold, I recognize it, I have been here before............I have a real cute girl friend working in a shoe store here. We drove to the harbor and the parking lot there was jammed packed with RVs. We found a spot and went to sleep.
We got up early for a change, we walked around the harbour and watched the sun rise. From here you can take a ferry out to a very small island, a popular summer location.
Mom found out that the convention was so crowded you could hardly move around, so we changed our mind and went to the campsite for the night. Good thing, let,s go to the shoe store .....jaaaayyy
It was a pretty steep hill walking into town, peace of cake for me ...........for Mom.......Oh well...
Apparently I’m in need for a good bath, since the trees where I went to the bathroom have been discharging some real sticky stuff, that made my hair feel like glue. People frown upon dogs in their showers, but Mom found a family bathroom with a baby tub, and we are going to lock ourselves in as soon as everyone else are in bed..........shhhh that’s our secret.....
This is me following day after my very refreshing bath............
This is what Google say about "polka gris"
The name polkagris refers to a lively European swirling dance polka, which was still a novelty when the polkagris was invented.
The dance originated in the middle of the 19th century and is still a common genre in Swedish folk dance and folk music.
"Polka" in the candy's name may refer to the way traditional polkagris is made, twisting red and white sugar dough ribbons.
"Gris" means "pig", and was at that time used as an expression for candy.
Good thing to know, I guess.
We are now at Swedens second largest island in the Baltic sea, but I'll tell you about that tomorrow.
until than, lots of wet kisses to you all.
Every morning we wake up to a thick fog, quite exciting looking. I stayed in bed napping as Mom went out to shoot some pictures. As a matter of fact, I didn’t get out of bed until 11 am, and only because that’s when Mom decided it was time to move on.
at 11 the fog was gone and the view changed to this
Please please Mom, just a short swim, it can’t hurt ..............it’s waaaay to cold and you’ll get filthy dirty and I have no way of drying you now............excuses excuses I say.
We were going to a castle called Skokloster, and it’s located on a peninsula in the lake of Mälaren, not very far from the airport where we'll be flying back to Florida . Carl Gustaf Wrangel was born in 1613 and he became commander of the Swedish army, and it was he who comissioned the construction of the castle By 1668 the biggest privatley built castle ever in Sweden was roofeed over. It was furnishd with the very best of everything. The general died in 1676, and part of the castle never finished. In the large banqueting hall, the scaffolding and tools remain, as the builders left thinking they would never get paid.
This is a painting showing how the castle looked back in the days. Most prominent visitors came by boat from Stockholm and their dogs have no lead.....
There’s with a little bit of sadness we now left Moms puppy town and headed south. No more narrow dirt roads and forests that lasts forever, no more reindeers .........roads are now mostly wide with two lanes and factories are spewing pollution in the air.............it doesn’t even come close to the air in big US cities though.
Finally Mom got the chance to take a picture of the giant cheese slicer that stands there to represent a really great tasting cheese from her province. (Sometimes IKEA in Orlando sells it ) It’s a hard cows milk cheese, strong in flavor, it’s taste is described as somewhat like parmesan cheese, salty but more bitter. The Swedes consider it the king of cheeses and demand for it has often outstripped the limited supply. For this reason, it’s roughly twice as expensive as other types of aged cheese.Västerbotten cheese must be aged for at least 12 month, but 14 month is more common. The cheese was invented in a small village in the 1870s, and supposedly it happened as a dairy maid was left alone to stir the curd of a traditional cheese, but was interrupted by her lover, and this resulted in altering the periods of heating and stirring of the curdling milk.........maybe a fable, but still a cute story and great tasting cheese with a very secret recipe is the result.
This is one mean looking kitty cat.............even meaner that my hissing kitty I used to have at home
RIP Dipstick.....
Mom thought her favorite statue had disappeared, but it had moved to a much better location in the middle of a round about close to a school..............busy ant .........busy pupils..........very appropriate for sure
Driving along listening to the radio we hear an announcement about some gay activists had painted the steps to the church in rainbow colors, and that’s the town we planned to visit..........hahaha, good thing we aren’t in Russia. Someone on the radio thought it could stay that way because it brightened up the steps, and Mom tend to agree............
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