Thursday, July 10, 2008

Swooooosh!

What was that? What you mean already back to work?!?!
I cant believe that my vacation just went by like a blink of an eye! But by gods it was a busy blink!

The first two weeks was spent at home doing gardening stuff or so we thought, you see my knee happened and that put a nice stop to that. At least we got a bit done before i had to take a seat on the sofa and the stupid knee was much better when we went to Germany and England.

Oh the concert with Bruce was magnificent! I have for so long wanted to go and see him in concert but it has always been hard to get tickets since they sell out in a matter of hours here in Sweden. But my clever husband looked elsewhere when it wasn't possible to get tickets for the concerts in Gothenburg so he thought, why not a weekend in Hamburg so he could finally ask me the question, Excuse me, but are you a Hamburger.... Yeah i know, he has a warped comic streak in him but i love him for it all the same. I don't know if i like Hamburg though. A bit soulless if you know what i mean. Oh it is a big town and all but almost all of its history had been blasted away in WW2 and it showed.. I really cant get all excited about something built in the 50s and 60s not to mention the 70s..brrrr. As well as i cant understand the need to advertise the red light district as a 'must do' when in Hamburg. We had a quick drive-by with the open top tour bus (yes you got to do one of those) in St Pauli and the famous Reeperbahn. And that was frankly enough to put you off from going there anymore. I cant and will not ever see the point of going somewhere to see someone stick a needle up their arm, totally oblivious to the fact that a full tourist bus is slowly crawling by watching him do it. Just as i cant see what point you have of the pictures you take of the man...? Is that what you will show your friends back home when they ask what your holiday in Hamburg was like? Sigh...

I would like to go to Germany again but maybe to somewhere that has a bit more history saved. And you got to admire the German efficiency. Everything was on time and clean and ... well there is nothing to complain about, well maybe that irritating habit of dubbing everything into German on the telly. Do you know how weird it is hearing a German voice coming out of Orlando Blooms mouth when trying to watch Elizabethtown? It was just too much. We ended up watching the football (yay Spain!) and trying to decipher the news and weather.

Our week in England was lovely. Lots of shopping done(new smaller clothes that actually fit me!!) and we had a really nice family day out hiring a boat on The Broads celebrating James' dads 60th birthday. He didn't know where we were taking him but he soon sussed the general direction out and then he put two and two together. Everyone took turns in driving the boat and we had a nice buffe picnic by the side of the river and toasted in some bubbly. It was very relaxing gliding down the little rivers and canals, just watching the world go by and look on in amazement how big a boats some people have! And luck would have it it didn't rain until the very last hour.

We had 2 days at home before going off to Stockholm with some friends of ours. We had a 3 night stay in a hotel, saw lots of stuff you don't normally do when in Stockholm, like the boat tour under Stockholms bridges, going by boat to the viking settlement of Birka, the lovely garden and castle of Rosendal, went up the tower at Kaknäs and got rewarded with a great view of Stockholm, had a night out in the amusement park Gröna Lund where we did try out the Funny House and the Haunted House (well me and Rosie wanted to get scared) and watched Fredrik go on one roller coaster after another while safely on the ground taking pictures of him. We also managed to have a long walk through the Old Town and all its small alley ways and artists shops. Not to mention tripping over all the Japanese tourists flocking around every corner. I don't know why Stockholm is so popular with the Japanese but they seem to be everywhere in summertime.

All in all a very good vacation, part from my knee which btw is much better now so I'll stop going on about the knee since the knee is so much better in a knee like way...