Torvehallerne

Saturday was a busy day. Nathan started it very early, together with Sam at Thomas' place, with champagne breakfast and some rugby on TV. The rest of us just chilled out and had a lazy morning start.

Then we all went to Torvehallerne for lunch. 

I had never been before, and it was truly an amazing experience! From now on I will always go here for lunch when I'm in the capital! It has lots of small restaurants and lots of possibilities to get tasty takeaways.

Torvehallerne is Copenhagen's new food temple. It opened in 2011 and consists of two market halls with over 60 stalls with fresh fruit, vegetables, fish, meat, cheese, bread and an array of Danish specialties. Torvehallerne has 60 000 visitors each week.

We all had something different for lunch, pulled duck sandwiches, fish and chips, prawn bulgur salad etc. It was super yummy and I loved just sitting there and watching all the hustle and bustle and people walking by.

Those summer nights

Nathan is back in Brunei and the kids and I have just arrived back to Skara from a fabulous weekend in Copenhagen. We've not only done lots of fun stuff and caught up with our good friends - we had unbelievably amazing weather all weekend! It's been super sunny and warm, all throughout the days and into the evenings, aaaahhh. 

In fact, Nathan left without having used his jackets even once during the whole holiday!!!

Friday night was spent in Søren & Katja's garden, together with good friends - and a quite a few bottles of wine...

Even Sam & Kicki were there, having come down from Nyköping on a weekend get-away. Really good to see them.

Birthday catch-up

Unfortunately we are never here for Mormor or Morfar's birthdays as they celebrate in May and June, which is bad timing for us since our summer holiday doesn't kick in until early July.

When Lucas called to congratulate Morfar this year, he said we should have a cake when we arrived later in the summer.

Said and done, Lucas helped Mormor bake a cake the other day, yum yum yum!  Never too late to celebrate birthdays!

Cracking the Toblerone piñata

The kids got to crack their big 2 kg win, didn't take long to get it open. So much chocolate!

Cycling Swedish style

Nathan has taken his Boardman out a few times this summer too, not only at family rides, but on a few racing rides.

He has been enjoying the stunning scenery and the quiet roads.

Systembolaget - a Swedish institution

In Sweden, you can only buy alcohol (or more accurately alcoholic beverages containing more than 3,5% alcohol) in special shops called Systembolaget. 

You have to be 20 years old to shop there. 

Systembolaget is one of the world's largest buyers of wine and spirits from producers around the world. The selection they have of wine and beer is pretty mind blowing!

Hard to choose! But he finally settled for a couple of these hard core beers, ha ha!

I had a giggle at the wine tetra packs. Not only do the sell the 3 liter bag-in-box wines, and the 1 liter tetra cartons; I also found these little tetras, same size as a juice box!

Hilarious! 

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!