Sweden Road Trip 2006- Day 6

Well, the hurricane that the mother-in-law promised never happened. We did get some really strong winds in the morning and the coast was emptied of water (the Baltic does not really have a high and low tide, but the strong wind was blowing out to the sea. The water on the beach was pushed away from the beach out to the sea by about 100 feet). We used it as an excuse to stay in bed and take a super lazy morning, not that we needed much of an excuse. This is the only hostel that we have planned on staying two nights at and I have to say that it is a wonderful idea!

This trip is a bit of an experiment. M and I have never taken a trip where we were not really always on the go. Plus we have not traveled (other then to my parents’ house in Texas) with N before, which is a huge factor. We have talked about taking a long road trip with N next year to Australia and this is a little test to see how it will be. So far it has been very educational. What we have learned is that we can not do everything we want to do. Travel time is about 10 am until 5 pm, with at least 2 breaks in that time period. Car poops are the worst poops of all. And perhaps the most important lesson of all is that no matter how tired each of us are, it is important to remember not to take the tiredness out on the other parent.

Even though the wind continued this afternoon, we went for a hike anyway. I know I just said that we were going to take it easy, but there is a limit to the madness. We went ahead with our plans for the day and went to the National Park Stenshuvud. This is not a very large national park, but it is cozy. We walked to the top of the little hill where it actually has three different peaks. The wind was blowing so hard that we determined only to hike to one of the peaks. Then down to the nature centre. We returned to the car along the trail that followed the coastline. The hike in total was about 5km long. By the time we got back to the car, N was sound asleep.

Sweden has a total of 28 national parks. It was the first nation in Europe to create a national park. They range in size and accessibility. An example of the differences is the park in Lapland (northern Sweden) called Muddus is 493 sq km, whereas the national park in Dalarna called Hamra is only 800m by 400m and can only be accessed by foot by knowledgeable outdoorsmen. They are talking about establishing the nation’s first underwater national park off the west coast. It is currently being negotiated and is supposed to be established in 2009.

We had a nice little fika at the hostel this afternoon. M was boring and had the same thing again. I was a little more daring and had basically the same thing again, only with apple filling. I think that we have determined that we want to have at least one additional 2 nights in the same spot. The problem is trying to figure out how we can do this. We would like to do it in one of the more cozy hostels, but then it makes the national park at the end a little more difficult. Plus, the one that we would like to stay two nights in only has horrible phone time during the week and no phone time during the weekend. So we will not know until Sunday if it is possible to stay for a second night at the hostel.

We talked about having fika at the restaurant at the Kivik apple cider factory, but we did not. Not because we did not want to, but because we decided to go out for dinner tonight. This town has a restaurant that is well known called Buhres (www.buhresfisk.se). It started as a place to buy smoked fish, then into a deli and finally into a restaurant. It has won all kinds of awards for its food and for the building that the restaurant is in. We had planned on eating out one nice meal on the trip. Experiencing new foods and restaurants is one of the many fun aspects of traveling. The place was a little expensive, but price worthy. For us, at this point in our lives, it is more of the question of how will N behave.

So we took a chance and decided to go. We were expecting the place to be packed, far from it. We were the only people in there for the first hour. After 1.5 hrs, two other groups arrived. One of the benefits of coming in low season is that you don’t have to book a table. Yesterday we talked about how Kivik is famous for its apples. It is also famous for its smoked eel. So that is what I had for an appetizer. It is a little intimidating eating eel for the first time. It was really good, as I have been told by M. For the main course M had baked salmon with an apple topping and an artichoke sauce. She said that it was fabulous and the best meal she had eaten in, she can not remember since when. My main course was good, but I went with something a little more daring. I had grilled herring, nothing that I would normally get. It was good and I was glad that I had tried it. The waitress was really good with N. She talked to her and brought her little things to play with and color. The food, the service and the atmosphere were wonderful. I would recommend it to anyone wanting a good meal in the area to try it. It would be worth a little trip to try it. Make sure to check to make sure they are open. In the low season they are only open Thursday through Sunday.

I do one/two warnings about the restaurant. First, they charge 10:- for tap water. I do not think that it is bad to charge for water, but it should be published that you are going to charge (I can not complain too much, since we really did not look for it, it may have been there). The other thing is to double check your bill. We were overcharged for M’s meal. It was not enough to go back and complain, but it is just the principle of the matter. It was a wonderful meal, but the first thing that M will think about this place is getting overcharged rather then the wonderful sauce.