Visby and Almedalen

This summer, for a serie of circumstances, I ended up having the possibility to travel to Visby for going to Almedalen.

Visby

Almedalen is a political event that lasts about a week. All the politician and a lot of organizations meet up and there are a lot of events and seminars. During the years, this event has grown up in size and, as for every event in Visby, half of Stockholm is there.
Said this one has to know that I am completely disinterest in politics. I have no clue what goes on in my own country most of the times, and in Sweden, it is even less. I am quite detach, I do not know the people that run this place and surely, I wasn't burning to be in Almedalen for some special reason (or for meeting some local VIP).
However, I thought it could have been an interesting experience, and it was.

In the architects antrum...

One of the seminars

In the town center

Almedalen per se' didn't impress me. On the other hand, I was very puzzled of the importance given to an event where there is a large amount of noise produced by everyone. Who is there is mostly to talk and show off, not to listen. If you have a message, you can be there and splat it in everyone's face, but it is not said that somebody will actually understand it.
So, it is a bit of a waste of time. Except if your voice is big enough to actually be heard.

Visby on the other hand was very pitoresque. The historical centre is small, compact and it is lovely to just stroll around, although there was a lot of people (but I suspect that is almost inevitable the whole summer there).

Streets of Visby

Typical house in Visby. House painted with tar.

Details of the painting on the house

Streets of Visby

Nice corners

Interesting buildings

The wall is beautiful from every angle, but especially at sunset. The church ruins are fascinating.

Majestic

Inside the ruins

A buildings meltpot

Beautiful church ruins

Basically, everything that is breathing medieval is very refreshing in a country where wherever you go the most ancient building is from the 1800 century and everything else has been burnt down, reutilized for building something else, or haven't existed at all.
Of course it is not Rome, but considering where one is, it is quite impressive that the core of the town is almost intact with old buildings.

View from the wall

Houses and wall

One of the towers

The wall at sunset

I had also the opportunity to peek a look outside the wall. Visby per se' loses then its touch as soon as one get far away from the center. It becomes a very conventional 70s shaped town.

Nothing extraordinary (except that there are two cranes here). But this picture became really good in my opinion!

Outside Visby the island have plenty of potential. The landscape can be very beautiful and dramatic, with high cliffs standing on water (pity that the weather was awful when I went to observe the panorama...), there are again ruins of quite big monasteries and finally, there are also small fishermans villages, small, intact in the atmosphere, typical with low buildings.

Talking of Roma. This is the ruins of the monastery in Roma

Roma monastery

Building annexes to Roma monastery

 If food though is a very important element for my trips, it was not the case for the rest of the people I was surrounded, so sadly, the food experience was quite boring. Not that I would think that during such week there is the possibility to eat in some nice place, with typical food, at a reasonable price, but we ended up eating a pizza, and of course, that I would have never chosen if I'd be on my own visiting there.
Hopefully, if there will ever be another trip, there will be then some chance to eat something typical! 

Brosarp

During our vacation time in Åkarp, we decided to do a small excursion.
The kids had the opportunity (slightly guided by their parents) to choose where to go and the destination was Brosarp.
The place is located in the east part of Skåne and the reason for going there is that it is possible to take a train ride from Brosarp to St Olof and back. On a steam train.

The train is ready to go

 The whole experience is very nice because everything is handled like in the old days. It is possible, for example, to buy tickets in the station. From a person. Through a window. And the person is dressed with a bit old fashioned clothes.

Brosarp's station

The whole station is still breathing 1930's atmosphere. The building per se is decently well preserved and there are details, from the benches, to a fireplace, from even a scale, that gives also an idea of how a station was run in the past.

A stove in the waiting room

Waiting for the train

The old timetable

 The train is composed by the steam locomotive, plus different wagons. The wagons are mostly different from each other and, if I remember right, all of them are from the 30s - 40s.

Interior of a wagon

 The experience is very different from being on a train today. First of all is incredibly noisy. But then it is quite slow and shaky. Oscar was very afraid and didn't dare to go on the platform to feel the wind and experience the landscape from outside.
Going through the hills is very nice. The ride is about 40 minutes and the train stops at few stations on the way. While going of course there is a lot of whistling coming from the locomotive.
The only thing to do on the train is to admire the scenery or talk to each other. I'd say taking out a mobile phone and surfing during this ride should be forbidden!

Vitaby station

 The final destination is St Olof. There there is again a station, a ice cream kiosk (sadly, prepackage ice cream) and apart for a toilet visit (since there is none on the train) one can stay and study the locomotive, first doing maneuvers to reach the other end of the train, second while it is steaming off and preparing to go back.

The locomotive in all its beauty

Tjo-tjoooo (chuu chuuu)

On the way back, with Isabella, we took turns to stay on the platform just in front of the locomotive. That was the best idea we got (apart that we got ashes stains on the clothes, legs and shoes). It was very impressive to be in front of the locomotive and one could observe the environment with new eyes.
It was definitely the best part of the experience. Oscar, sadly, was still terrorized by the sounds, so he didn't dare to be on the platform, but when finally back at Brosarp he couldn't just get enough to observe the locomotive in action, from distance.
At Brosarp we decided to get some food and the option, apart to buy ice cream, is to get some food on the restaurant/cafe wagon situated on one of the tracks. The food is very basic but with a railway team in the naming convention. At least, good enough to give something the kids to chew on at a reasonable price.
There is also a little shop selling interesting railway related books, railway related toys and such.
A nice "souvenir" ending for the extreme train nerds that might pass by ;-)

Bosjökloster

This summer me, Isabella and two friends of ours, decided to take a girl-power excursion and have a little trip nearby. One of the purposes was also to visit a shop (Frid och Fröjd) which is a bit "luxury" second hand shop, that I had put an eye on by looking at its Instagram pictures.

As that was the last thing we did during the day, we spent most of the day instead at Bosjökloster.
The place has inspired me for many years, but we have never got the chance to actually go there.
The castle/monastery and the church are located on a little peninsula, that not so long ago, was actually a little island in the middle of the nearby lake (Ringsjö).
The church can be visited freely, while the garden and the castle (which once upon the time was a monastery) wants a fee.

The parts that can be visited of the castle are what once was possibly the refectory, which is now full with details about which families have been living there, and some interesting information about the nunnery.
The church is simple, but soberly decored and when one is visiting it, can listen to a recording that explain the story of the place.

A very beautiful kakelugn

On the other wing, one can visit several rooms and admire the staircase that, full of enormous portraits of his old inhabitants, brings to the private parts of the castle.

One of the entrances to the castle

Everything is quite well preserved and the view from the rooms, down the lake, is very pitoresque. It is definetely not a coincidence that somebody thought of building a nice palace (nunnery? ;)) here.

In the court

The garden/park is of course also huge and divided in different areas. Sadly, the weather was not at its top the day we decided to pay a visit, but nevertheless, we managed to look around quite much.

Beautiful red dahlias

The playground was a must that we didn't manage to skip.

After that, we ate at the cafe', which was having a quite disappointing menu (just some quite expensive sandwhiches and very limited kids alternatives). 

There are different activities offered for the kids, though. From a funicular railway (which we skipped), to some minor boat activity (if I don't remember wrong), to, finally, walking in a majestic park where there are few animals.

The first animals are quite cute goats that run around in a fenced area. 

At the end of the area there is one of the most beautiful tree I have seen (which sadly I forgot to photograph without the kids inside). The oak tree I am talking about is about 1000 years old and it is just majestic. 

Finally, there are few animals more that one can meet.

Horses. Well. Mini tiny small horses that gets easily annoyed (and kicked infact Isabella) 

The horses and their friends

But the most surprising ones to meet where the llama, who had the most extraordinary funny faces (and haircut) ever.

I wonder though why on earth are they staying there! This is not South America ;-)

Hi there! We are very cool!

Assuming you manage to find a sunny day during a summer in Skåne, the place is worth a visit. I would just bring my own food next time, while instead of relying on their cafe' (I have heard though that the nearby golf club has a more decent restaurant, so maybe one can use that for satisfying the hunger). 

Nostalgia

During the past months, I have spent a lot of energy trying to find the time to update the blog.
I have surely small and uninteresting things that I would like to pester everyone with by sharing them through the blog, and although I have been taking notes of what I want to talk about, I have barely managed to prioritize finding the time for this.
The result is that some stuff got obsolete and some "classical" posts have not happened (the one about Isabella's birthday for example).
Said this, it seems though that everyone survived just fine...

On top of this desolation of posts, I have also noticed that most of the older posts, which were enriched by wonderful pictures, have lost the appealing side (the pictures, that is), since they were on some free online service and it seems that doesn't work anymore.
Well, if anyone gets the urge to actually be curious what certain things were or not, I have of course all the pictures (I hope) so in that case, I would try to fix the post, otherwise, I hope posterity will forgive me for my lazyness.

During the last months, apart some house improvements, which has brought also, together with the piano, boxes full of manga, books and university material (wow, I was keeping my notebooks in such order), a wave of nostalgia, especially "musically" wise.
Nevertheless, when going back to Italy for the summer holidays, I checked for more find from the prehistoric age and got some nice hits.

Anime from the 80s

Although our kids are not exposed to the same quantity of anime that I have watched (both because we are a bit stricter with the TV than my parents and because we have to go through youtube for watching them), I am trying to gently push down the culture I have been growing up with. 

Finding these two books was great. "Il pianolibro" was a cute book with small extract of the anime opening titles in simplified piano score format. There was also a little keyboard that could have been used to play pedagogically the songs. Unfortunately, that got broken very quickly.

Since now the kids are watching Captain Tsubasa (Holly e Benji) - finally, by the way - they like me to play that quite much.

The other book, Memole has also the opening title piano score on the back and Isabella loved the story. I hope to find the cartoon online sometime. 

Mermista, She-ra Princess of Power and Angella

After visiting a friend of mine, who had a fantastic book about the Masters of Universe, I ended up searching my She-ra dolls, where She-ra was the sister of He-man. If you don't know who they are, or you are too old, or you are too young, in either case, I recommend to study a bit on Google :-)

The dolls became very popular with Isabella, so I was forced to bring them to Sweden. 

Sadly, Angella's wings have been broken almost from the very beginning and now the shields and the sword are quite brittle and break every two seconds....

These were the 90s instead

Finally, I have found also the piano scores of one of Take That's albums (I would have preferred though to have "Everything changes"). Luckily, I was so cheap that I just went and did photocopies of the piano score. Not funny to play those songs when you don't have a boy band....

Our autumn trip to Cyprus

I have been very bad in updating this blog (or any other, for that matter), with the result that I have been not very quick in posting about few events, like for example a trip we have taken during early autumn.
And not only, now I was trying to find some pictures from the trips and I found very scarce traces of them. Sadly!

Fig Tree Bay, view from our hotel

Our destination was Protaras, in Fig Tree Bay in Cyprus. The place didn't really disappoint us. Of course, turistic shaped (possibly more for a British market) but quite convenient for a family with small kids, afterall.
We chose an hotel which could grant closeness to the see, wifi, decent food based on the reviews and some other extra (some also that we were not exactly looking for).
Its name is Sunrise Beach Hotel and it has a bit "outdated" style for few things. A bit of 80s atmosphere is around in how the building is, as well as some part of the service (the buffet restaurant for example), but it had quite good comforts.

Sunrise Beach Hotel

The pools were quite nice, there were a lot of activities if one wanted to do some (from watergym, ping pong tournament, baby disco and even kids club, with a very new and fresh small cinema!) and there were a lot of restaurants one could pick up through the hotel. We went to few of them and some of them were very good (Kyklos, greek and Fishbone, with fish specialities, although a bit more expensive), others  impressed us less (Marcello's, the italian one, but of course...we are Italian!).
The breakfast was not exactly my cup of tea (but my comparison meter is based on the breakfast we were having in Nai Harn in Phuket at the Nai Harn Hotel, so possibly it is a a bit unfair.
 

The beach and the sea

 Walking along the beach was very beautiful, also during the evening.
We chose a good time to be there. The day was warm and nice, not too hot (except maybe during the warmest hours, but I was in the hotel room with Oscar who was sleeping and Mattias and Isabella were at the kids' club). We got few afternoons of rain, which shortened our afternoons at the seaside, but we still managed to enjoy the wonderful sea, with warm water, clean and turquoise, nice sandy beach.
There was also not that many people, possibly few other retired people (as us), being that low season and that suited us since it is nice to not have to share the beach with the whole world.
The sunbeds at the beach were not owned by the hotel, but by the town, but that didn't bother us too much since we were mainly using as homebase the pool area (fairly closed to the beach anyway).

View over the bay

We got some disturbance for the first nights, when our kids couldn't fall asleep because our neighbours, with whom we were sharing a door (which of course we didn't need to use) were playing dice the whole night. The sound was just horrible.

After complaining to them, we went to the reception explaining our issue, and we got a new room where we could squeeze us.

The room were ok, but a bit compact for the four of us. A double bed, with an extra bed and a coat bed. 

It was not the worse room of the planet, but it could have been a bit more spacious and "fresher" - it had a bit torn look.

Beach

The child entertainment was a surprisngly positive note, which we didn't forecast not thought about. Apart from the kids' club, a nice "daycare" facility where one could leave the kids (we were always with Isabella if there) there was the baby disco which was very funny and the highest peak of the day for Isabella and Oscar.

The restaurant choice of the small town was quite good. We ended up though twice at Pizza Hut because Isabella wanted that (!!!), but we tried few local restaurants a couple of times.

We were eating a bit too early for the standard opening time, so we were often alone in the restaurants at lunch time. However, we always had very good food.

Portions were always big and the price not too bad. 

One of the most memorable visits was the one to Vangelis Tavern, which I saw also as highly ranked in Tripadvisor.

I wonder though if the food was "modified" a bit for the turistic market (a lot of fried potatoes were served all the time).

My lamb ribs at Vangelis Tavern (with Elsa drooling over the plate)

Amazing fried calamari in Kyklos restaurant

What I am most sad is that, possibly as a combination of having small kids (and Oscar needing to sleep during the afternoon) and the low season, we couldn't really do any excursion. I know that Cyprus has a lot of interesting places to visit and a lot of culture and history and I regret not making more efforts to actually go somewhere, but since in general, our vacation was a positive experience, I think we might go back there again and explore more (and the kids will be also older then!)