Sweden Road Trip 2006- Day 8

To start the day off, we went for a walk in the national park. This is for sure my favorite park thus far in Sweden. The trails are well marked and it is beautiful with all the colors. Today we walked up to the copper point. The view was even better today over the valley. For sure I would come back here. The only negative, and it was not a large negative was the number of people. It was low season and it was crowded. On the trail this morning, we had to wait to pass a group because it was so large. That is one of the benefits to traveling in the low season. If it is busy now, I can not imagine what it is like in the summer. The only place that was empty, was the café at the end of the hike. That should have been a good sign to avoid it, but we did not. M’s apple pie was average and I got sick from the hotdog that I had.

One of the interesting things about the national parks here is that the majority of them, you are not allowed to camp in. I am sure that there are some in the states that one can not camp in, but I have no idea which ones they would be. When I think of national parks, I think of camping, not a hostel next door to the park. Part of it is that most of them are fairly small, but they do not even have a designated camping spot. Most of them have a commercial camping spot next to it.

In the afternoon we went to Höganas. When M and I got married, we had to pick out our “china”. We decided that we did not want the traditional china, we were more interested in a fun type china, so we went with Höganas. For the most part, we have all that we will ever need, but one is never for sure. The factory is still in this town. We had hoped that we would be able to do a factory tour, like one can do in the glass factories, but that is not possible. They only have a store. Considering our record, you would think that we found something there, but we did not, which is a little surprising. We did go next door to the Kosta Boda store. There we did find something, from a factory that we have visited a number of times and have never liked anything- Sea.

There is a second factory in Höganas as well. This one, unlike the other one, is all hand done. The pieces are somewhat similar, the point that both use as a symbol, but no two are alike here. I liked more of the things here, because they were unique. They are also much more expensive. A couple of he pieces I would love to have. They even had a kitchen sink which was way cool. This will just have to be another thing that is added to my Swedish want list.

Since we did the ceramic factories, we headed to Kullagården. This is the lighthouse area. I could not believe that they were charging 40:- just to drive the road. We had not planned to go today, so we drove on. It is better to only pay once when you have to. We also stopped by this little village along the way. It is a café that is famous in the area for their vanilla hearts. The view from the café is suppose to be great. The only problem, it is only open in the summer. We had an idea that this was so, but we were hoping that it was not so.

After the bad hotdog experience from this morning, we determined to get to the hostel early. The check-in time was 4 till 7, we got there at 3:30. The lady that checked us in was early and friendly. The hostel itself was pretty amazing. The art on the walls was tasteful and some of it was very beautiful. The place if full of great pieces of furniture which is blended together perfectly with items from Ikea. The kitchen was beyond well stocked, consisting of even cookbooks. The Jonstorp Hostel was actually one of the ones which were recommended to us; mainly because they were suppose to be the most comfortable beds ever. They were nice, but not spectacular. Last night’s youth hostel had down duvets and equally cozy beds, so they actually win the prize for the best beds. Like most nights, we have the place all to ourselves- the advantage of traveling in the off season.