Postcard from Bangkok

I will be reveling in the memories from our weekend in Bangkok for quite a while. A perfect little getaway actually, and as I said in my previous post - it's truly amazing how much you can get done in such a short space of time! It was only 48 hours!

We managed to squeeze in quite a substantial amount of shopping, both in the many malls and amongst the gadgets and copy stuff in the MBK market stalls; we enjoyed some great meals both for lunch and dinners, yummy ice-cream breaks; we did visit some of the attractions - and we went on a lot of trains! Something that in itself is quite an adventure in Bangkok!

After these two trips I've now done here, I've started to like Bangkok, a lot! I've decided that for our next shopping trip Anna and I will be going to Bangkok instead of to Singapore; without husbands or kids though! They really can't hack it when it comes to shopping! :)
Anyway, here's some photos from our trip!

Always special flying with Daddy and get to visit the flight deck before take-off:





Waiting for transport at the hotel:



First stop - ice-cream at Häagen-Dagz! Mmm! Linnea just wanted a cone, but Lucas decided to go all in and order a big sundae!







Lucas: -"Mummy, take a photo of us!" ... Can you see him..?



We visited Madame Tussauds and met a lot of famous people. The kids thought this was pretty cool, we've never visited a wax museum before.
We stepped into the Royal Room and met Queen Elizabeth II:



Linnea got to make some phone calls from the Oval Office:



The kids challenged a few sporting heroes, here Linnea is doing a slam dunk with the Chinese basket ball player Yao Ming, the tallest player (228,6cm) in NBA:



Lucas gave Tiger Woods some advice:



The kids and Nathan had a chat with some of the Liverpool footballers, Gerard and Ronaldo:



After that they got on stage with some of their favourite pop stars.



Lucas reluctantly posed with Justin Bieber, because he said he's not that into him anymore... ha ha.



He was much more keen to see Michael Jackson:





Then we mingled a bit with the A-listers on the red carpet. We saw Beyoncé, Madonna, Anthony Hopkins, Brad Pitt, Lady Gaga, Angelina Jolie, Nicole Kidman and many more.
Here's the kids with Johnny Depp:



And here with Jim Carrey, a new favourite of Lucas':



I had coffee with (a not so look-a-like) George Clooney:



Nathan did an "Armstrong" at Oprah's:



And finally the kids received their Oscars, with Jackie Chan:



We had dinner at Lucas' favourite place ever, Tony Romas. In the very fancy mall 'Terminal 21'. Such a cool place!









Terminal 21 is nine floors of shopping, about 600 shops! It's built like an airport, and the theme continues all throughout the mall. There are airport floor signs that signal the arrivals in particular cities, a crisscrossing network of escalators, electronic display boards that bring to mind flight information displays at an airport terminal etc.
The basement level has a Caribbean theme, the lower ground floor brings you to Rome. Then it's Paris, Tokyo and London. The 3rd floor is Istanbul and even further up you have San Fransisco. It's very authentic, and very, very cool!







Here in Rome:



We took lots of trains to get around this time. Traffic is crazy and the taxi drivers fearless, so trains seemed like the best option!



In MBK, shopping for iPad covers and other gadgets!



Lucas at a bike shop, found a road bike just his size! If only we could have taken it on the plane...

Skara Sommarland 2013

Last year we basically only had one warm day of sunshine here in Sweden whilst Nathan was here. That day came after weeks of bad weather and rain, so going to Skara Sommarland then would've been a very bad idea, since thousands of people would've had the exact same idea. So last year we missed out on a visit.

Two years ago I took the kids and met with a friend of mine and her kids. But since I was keeping an eye of both of them, I didn't want the kids to go off doing any of the big water slides then. They just stayed in the lagoon.

Three years ago they were too small to do any of those rides - so yesterday was the day it was time to really test Skara Sommarland out! It's best known for it's water park after all!

But first we had to wait while Lucas went on the gokarts. He is big enough now to go on the bigger gokarts, and was very excited. The queue was extremely long though, I think he waited for about 1 1/2 hours... 

                                         

But then when it was his turn, he had some really fun 4 minutes..! Here he is ready to go, he's in the yellow car at the end:

           

           

           

  

           

           

     

We spent a few hours at the water park part. Even I got into my swimsuit, but I must admit, I didn't do a lot of bathing... it was really cold! Lucas tried to convince me that you did get used to it, but judging by how he looked after only a short while, I'm not that sure about that!

                                                 

It't not quite the same as back home, where they can be in the water a whole day without getting cold! But at least he and Nathan got to go on all the big slides, and they all tried the big wave pool etc. Linnea liked the lagoon best, even though we tried some of the slides too.

          

                                               

                                               

We also watched the Pirate Diving Show. The storyline hadn't changed since last time, but it's still impressive watching them do their tricks. Especially the dive while being "on fire", and the dive from the 25m platform.

                                                            

                             

Lucas' favourite ride turned out to be the bumper cars. He warmed up by taking Linnea along on the smaller ones...

        

        

While Linnea stayed and kept driving the Junior ones, Lucas advanced to the big bumper cars. We lost count on how many times he went on them! But I get it, the bumper cars were always my favourite too!

        

     

        

 

        

We also tried a few of the other rides of course. 

        

        

        

                                           

And when the park was about to close, we traditionally spent a few kronor on the chocolate wheels on the way out. Linnea played on number 18:

        

And won some Daim!

                                        

Only to get beaten by her brother... who played nr 8 on another wheel, and won the big prize there - 2kg of Toblerone!

        

So, bringing the big chocolate home was a great ending to a great day!