Leaving Öland

Tomorrow Friday we will leave Öland for this time. The weather has been fantastic and we have been swimming every day.

Lia and Farmor

Just realized that Lia hasn't made it to the blog that many times. We need to fix that of course. Here she is. Hanging out with farmor (grandmother).

O-Ringen

O-Ringen is the world's largest orienteering event. 22000 people spent five days running up and down the Swedish mountains in beautiful summer weather.


Adria was happy after successfully completing the first stage.


Sara, Isak and Adria. Our cottage was located just below the tree line. The day this picture was taken, we were lucky to find a few cloudberries.


Isak in full speed at the knatte knat (a fun course for the youngest).

Sleeping in a Train

We are now back at the cottage again after a road trip to the Swedish mountains where we did five days of orienteering races together with 22000 other orienteers. The drive from the cottage to the mountains is long so we stopped about half way in a small town called Nora where they have a hostel in a few old trains. A boy whose name begins with an I liked it very much...

The Troll Forest

The Troll Forest is a conservation area on the northern tip of Öland. Here we could see 900 year old oak trees, and other trees that are bent by the wind and look like "trolls" and other dark creatures. Many of the trees are 100-200 years old but have not grown espcially tall because of the salt and poor soil nutrition. We also saw a ship wreck.


Isak the Troll

We are going to the Swedish mountains today to do some orienteering races. The blog will probably not be updated for a week or so.

Isak and Matilda at the Circus

A day at the beach

After a few not so sunny days, we saw lots of blue skies today and spent a few hours at the beach. Sara and Emma joined us at the cottage Wednesday so Isak is now in heaven!

A day at a park

We visited Lådbilslandet (Box Car Land) for the first time last year and this will be a tradition for a few years. Isak and Lia spent a whole day driving tractors, motorbikes, towing trucks, trains or riding, as you can see in the picture, merry-go-rounds.

Knisa Bog

After a nice day yesterday with blue skies, the clouds returned and the temperature dropped a few degrees. Today we decided to go for a hike in the morning. Knisa Bog (Knissa mosse in Swedish) is a swamp/lake are just a few kilometers from the cottage and (the following is cut and paste from the Internet) it is a one of Öland’s few untouched wetlands since this type of nature was heavily reduced in the 19th century due to the irrigation systems. Parts of the bog became a nature reserve already in the 1930th and today it’s included in Natura 2000, a list of places that are of national interest for preservation and outdoor life. Knisa Mosse consists of 370 acres where over 50 different birds are nesting.

We did see a few birds, but we are still trying to find out what kind of birds.

Portugal

Just a few days after we arrived in Sweden, we packed our bags again and took off. The destination this time was Portugal. We spent 10 days in this beautiful and very nice country and we can definitely recommend a trip to this corner of Europe. Lisbon is the capital of Portugal and we looked around that city for two days before we went south to the cost of Algarve where we met up with the Asp family (Anders, Erika, Elsa and Agnes).

Algarve is busy with tourists, but there is a reason for it:
- the weather is very nice (it can be too hot sometimes, but we were lucky. Most days the mercury didn't get above 32-33C and with a cool breeze. We explored different beaches everyday and they were all spectacular.

The water was, however, not super child friendly, since the waves were pretty strong and it got deep pretty quickly. Some adults complained about the temperature, and it wasn't 25-27C like in Croatia, but this is the Atlantic and you can't expect more. The kids prefered the pool. Yes, we did have a pool and after a morning at the beach, we hung out around the pool.

We are now back at the cottage in Sweden, and since it takes a long time to upload pictures, we will start with just a few today and post more later on.


View over Lisbon, which is built on several hills. Just like most other south European cities, it had small alleys, many plazas, crazy drivers, history and beautiful buildings. We liked the city.


A 11th century Moorish castle in Sintra, west of Lisbon. Isak loved this place and probably walked 6-7km in total this day. All up or down.


Not just brains...


A tyical beach on the coast of Algarve.