I woke up to a beautiful winter wonderland, this was the view from my sisters kitchen window this morning;
The kids put me to work right away and we kept ourselves busy all morning baking bread.
My mom made a fire in snow in the backyard and we had hot dogs for lunch.
The sun sets really early so by the 3:30 evening walk it is already turning dark.
Whenever I visit my grandfather, he wants to take me to Torekov.
It’s a sleepy village during the winter season but packed with tourists and summer guests during the summer.
Ive been a million times but I learned something new today;
Once upon a time a Danish queen sent her 3 stepchildren out to see to be killed, one of the kids, Thora was washed up and found by this rock and the village was named after her.
I had traveled 39 hours by plane, car and train, and the FIRST store I stepped into, I found this from my job.
No visit to Bastad is complete without a visit to a “Loppis”.
Just because I made it to Arlanda last night didn’t mean I made it to my final destination. I arrived at Arlanda Airport at 11pm last night and it took us about 3hours to drive to my parents house cos of the bad weather. Had a few hours of sleep and then on the road again to head south.
There’s apparently a 30 minutes snow free guarantee on the major roads in Sweden, but the Snow God does not care about that. This is the major road you would take to if you were to drive from Stockholm to the European continent. The snow was falling so heavy there were no time to maintain the road and keep it snow free.
My family says we’re related to Per Brahe, the dude that lived here. I’ve been driving passed it countless times, but I have actually never stopped to take a closer look at it. I will though, next time…
My parents didn’t want me to drive in this road condition so they put me on a train down to visit my grandfather.
I made it to Båstad at 4:40pm on the 26th, about 39 hours after I left Los Angeles. This is possibly my favorite place on earth, I have yet to find a place which I feel so strongly about. I spent all my summers here, from the age of 1 to 20.
This is the doormat that welcomes you to my grandfathers home.
Be aware of the Old ManMy grandfather has got the coolest things, just look at this wallpaper!
I think this might be one of the reasons we get along so well…
Order is just for idiots, Geniuses can handle chaos!
I took off at 5:30pm on the 24th. Over the last few years, I for some reason always fall asleep just after boarding the planes and miss the take offs. I don’t mind, I hate the take off’s anyways since I always get motion sick from them. I usually wake up 20-30 minutes into the flight and 30 minutes after that I get restless. I picked a really good seat this time thought, with a power outlet and extra legroom so I could play around with my computer and not getting bothered by the passenger pushing his seat back in front of me. I managed to get about 4 hours of sleep and woke up while we were flying over Ireland – the green island that was covered in snow and had turned white!
I had a 5hour layover at Heathrow Airport, an awesome way to spend Christmas Day! I had plenty of time to visit the shops and pick up gifts for my parents and grandfather.
Grandpa’s favorite cheese is the Blue Stilton Cheeses from Fortnum & Mason in London, They didn’t have it at the airport so I got him the one from Harrods instead, I’m sure he will like it as well.
The Christmas Day beer was Guinness!
And I was about to fall asleep right about here…
Super excited to have made it to a snow covered Sweden!
When I made it to the luggage claim there were bags from what seemed like two planes just waiting there to be picked up by their owners. I kept thinking of how many gifts that was in those bags and never made it in time for Christmas Eve, felt sorry for the people who didn’t get their bags, and at the same time worried it would happen to my bags as well.
I have lost count in how many times my luggage has been delayed. My bags were among the first ones to show up on the carousel this time though!
We packed up Olga 3, my car, and took a road trip up to Solvang this weekend.
About 1 mile away from home, I did not see a huge whole in the road and it sounded like the trip was gonna end right there, but luckily, all we had to do was to restore the iPod and the journey could continue.
Driving along the coast the whole way is not the quickest, but way more fun than the freeways.
The way up was not entirely adventure free, a Hummer in front of us on PCH blew a tire and if we had not payed enough attention we would have hit the tire and it would probably have ended a little ugly. The shotgunner in Olga 3 who is usually paparazzi style fast with the shutter did not manage to take a photo even though he had two cameras in his lap.
There’s an ostrich farm on Route 246 between Bulleton and Solvang, they charge $4.00 to enter the farm and an additional $1.00 if you want to feed the birds. They also have a sign up saying that you are not allowed to stop on the road outside to take pictures. We thought that was ridiculous, made a U-turn, pulled over and snapped some photos, just because we could.
Solvang is a small Danish town close to Santa Barbara, about 120 miles north of Los Angels. It is surrounded by wineries and I have no idea of why this town looks like it belongs on Jylland.
Ready for some wine tasting!
It is off season and the grapes seemed a little sad.
We were recommended to check out the Sunstone Winery, so we did.
Once when me and my sister went to London, we checked in to a dodgy hotel and the manager told us we absolutely had to check out and take a photo of the lovely view from the hotel window, he really pointed this out. It turned out the view was some construction and a train station. We did of course take a photo of the view. We had a similar experience at this vineyard; the lady that hit us up with the white wine insisted on her taking a photo of us in this archway. I did not pay attention to what she said, but she mentioned something about a postcard.
The Sunstone Winery cellar.
The first red wine cheer! Their wine did not really impress me.
There was this halo around the sun, I dont know what that was all about, but it was cool!
We heard good things about the Olive Garden in Solvang, so we payed them a visit, they had really good balsamic vinegars, in addition to the the wine off course!
Bought a bottle of the Twenty Mile -07 Sauvignon Blanc, it reminded me of grandpa’s home made elderflower drink. The girl behind the bar signed it.
Time to head home after an awesome weekend!
Wake up call was 3:45am, it’s been a while since I had to get up that early! We packed our bags and off we went. First stop was the gas station.
The wind, a good resource for power, and it looks cool too!
Some 3 hours later we arrived at the Joshua Tree National park, just in time for breakfast!
It was already starting to get hot!
We did bring our swimwear, but we were unfortunately not allowed to go for a swim…
It did however use to be water here, the marks on this rock was over 7ft high.
I left Sydney at 1:30pm on Sunday, and arrived in Los Angeles before noon the same day. Super cool that after a 14 hour flight arrive before you entered the plane! I couldnt wait to see the ocean again and stroll around in the water and pretty much tossed my bags on the floor and headed down to the beach.
I had in mind that maybe I would be a little jet lagged and wanted a nap on the beach, but I felt great and we just walked around and watched people. It took me a while to understand that it was Sunday and that’s why it was so crowded.
We had a long walk on the beach, it felt nice!
I wanted ice cream but was talked into having dinner first.
I’m sad to leave, but the plan is to come back next year!
I like having aisle seats on longer flights so I can stretch out my legs, but since I’ve got a stop in Sydney on the way home and the first flight is only a few hours, I didn’t really mind when they just assigned me a window seat. I didnt have anyone next to me either, so I got lucky.
The sun always shine above the clouds!
Flying into Sydney, Australia, you can see the harbor bridge from here!
I had quite a long stop over in Sydney, but I couldn’t be bothered with leaving the airport.
We arrived in Ōtautahi “the place of Tautahi” like the Maori named it, or Christchurch, like the Brits named it.
We drove to the car rental place and the boys had a couple of hours to kill while waiting for the car to get fixed, so we strolled around on the streets. What city named Christchurch would not have a church as the central point of the city?
I spotted the Real Groovy record store which is the best record store in the world! I had to visit it, and since I will no longer sing for the boys in the backseat, they had to pick up a few cd’s for the rest of their NZ visit.
This Real Groovy was not as good as the one in Auckland or Wellington, but still all right.
I said good bye to my friends, they continued down to Wanaka and I am getting ready for my flight back home tomorrow.
Todays weather forecast said rain, but we had such a good time yesterday, and since I am flying back home on Saturday and the boys have to swing by the car rental place to get the car sorted out, we decided to give Mt Lyford a try again today anyway.
It did not look good at all as we drove up the mountain.
Around the next corner though, we managed to get above the first set of clouds, and even if it wasnt a clear blue sky, it was still a nice day!
They had this truck that was buried in the snow, a good photo opportunity!
After our little photo session, we did a hike again, since we were still not sure if the rainstorm was gonna hit us or not we thought it was for the best to do the hike as early as possible.
The rain never hit us and we continued to play throughout the day! I’m making some turns in nice spring snow,
I am bummed that today was my last day of skiing, I was really starting to get into it again over the last couple of days. I made a decision that I will hit Big Bear at least once this winter, and hopefully even make it out to Colorado for a weekend. My life also took a huge turn when I decided to set up a goal and move here in April or May of next year.
New Zealand is the land of sheep, in 2003 New Zealands population was 3.9 million, and the sheep population was 39.2 million. That’s 10 sheep on every person!
New Zealand is also the land of adrenaline junkies, as long as the bridge is high enough, there will be bungy jump equipment set up on it, we never saw anyone jumping from this bridge though, guess it wasnt the right season.
