Lifecruiser

As a sunday pleasure, I thought I should invite you to our city, the capital of Sweden, Stockholm. (Stock = log, holm = islet or small island). There is no clear evidence of how it got it’s name.

The earliest mention of Stockholm dates from 1252 (not counted as town until 1270), so we really do have an old town. The most popular part of it is called The Old Town and have very old buildings with narrow streets (Mårten Trotzigs Alley measures 35 inches between the walls!)
and a special athmosphere of time aging, like you were thrown back in time.

The mentions I’ve heard from tourists is that Stockholm has interesting architecture, it’s beautiful, clean, green (38 parks) and with a lot of water. Often called The Northern Venice - no wonder - it’s 14 islands joined by 53 bridges! The city is one third water, one third green and the last third is urbanized.

Mr Lifecruiser forced me to write this fact: Stockholm region has about 54 golf courses too.

The beautiful and popular stockholm archipelago starts here with it’s 24.000 islands, rocks and skerries. The sweatwater Lake Mälaren meets the Baltic Sea at the sluice. Actually it’s several sluices, the most central’s name is Carl Johan after a swedish king, but it’s also called “divorce ditch” among people, because of all the problems and swearing that’s going on when boat people are going through the sluice with their boats ;-)

You can even go fishing in the middle of the city. The unpolluted swiftly-flowing water that runs through the city has the greatest number of fish species in the region. Salmon trout, pike, perch, bream, and salmon. The biggest known salmon caught there weighed 48 pounds.

Stockholm has 760 000 inhabitants. Greater Stockholm 1.900.000. (Sweden’s total: 9 millions). The average Stockholmer is 39 years old, earns SEK 20.500 ($2.622) per month, and has 1.36 children. And what about this fact: Stockholm has more single-person households than any other capital in the world. I can’t decide if it’s good or bad…. I think bad. I can’t imagine that all of them really wants to be single…?

Now we comes to the most important stuff for the hungry monsters like me: Sweden publishes more cookbooks per capita than any other country in the world, averaging one per day. We’re really appreciating good food, wanting variations in the recipes and have taken up cooking from all over the world. Only in Stockholm there is said to be between 1600-2500 restaurants. What can I say? We like to eat… Or maybe we need more because of the cold weather?

Mostly people come to Stockholm for the food, the design and the music. We enjoy the highest density of galleries and museums in the world, but there is so much other things to enjoy here too. After all, it’s a capital, so even the nightlife is high rated.

So what are you waiting for…?

NOTE: We’ve uploaded some old pics from The Royal Swedish Castle with surroundings, taken in springtime 2004. We were there to see the change of the royal guards (with horses, you know how much I love horses!) - and it was freezing cold. Brrr… Cold winds made our poor camera hands stiff, so no good photos…

Lifecruisers Royal Castle Photos

Stockholm Town Guide about The Royal Castle
Wikipedia about Stockholm

We’re going to Ireland in June!!!! It’s so exciting!!!! *jumping up and down*

Both of us have always wanted to see Ireland, it’s stunning beautifully landscape and the irish people and culture too. It’s almost like an fairy tale….

Description of the tour:

Day 1. Dublin - Irelands capital
Afternoon seightseeing tour with a local guide in Dublin. Seeing Dublins castle magnificent floors, built in the georgian time era showing historical portraits and fantastic furniture. Then going to Guinness museum to learn about and taste the famous dark brew. The evening is spend with other travellers over a welcome drink, dinner and an Irish cabaré.

Day 2. Castle Blarney & Killarney
A day to experience everything from farmer landscape to markets when leaving Dublin to get out in the countryside. Makes a stop close to Cashel to taste homebaked scones and drinking tea at a farm, which also gives us the chance to learn more about Irish farming. Just outside Cork we will visit Blarney Castle where we get the oppertunity to achieve the gift of achieve eloquent by kissing the well known stone in the area. We continue to the mountain area of Kerry and Killarney. After dinner we’ll visit one of Killarneys well known pubs that is characterized of music and singing.

Dag 3. Ring of Kerry Tour
We’ll get dressed in comfortable clothes to take a car tour along the beach of Muckross Lake and a guided tour in the 19th century Muckross House. Then on to one of Irelands most spectacular areas - The Ring of Kerry - by walking on Irelands highest mountain, Macgillycuddy´s Reeks. the path is passing through Glenbeigh with palmtrees and beutiful beaches, walking towards the offside Waterville and the colorful village Sneem. Then walking back towards Killarney via Moll´s gap - where dinner is waiting!

Dag 4. Cliffs of Mother & Bunratty Castle
Leaves Killarney, travelling towards Tarbert to take the ferry over the river Shannon. Continues along the coast line of Clare to Cliffs of Mother - the rocks with the height of 700 feet over the atlantic ocean. Driving to the Shannon region to check in at our hotel. This evening dinner is a medevial banquet with memorable entertainment in Bunratty Castle.
Comment: We’re going to take our Medevial outfits with us to wear at the banquet evening! And not telling anyone about it until we appears in them…. It will be so fun!

Dag 5. Shannon & Dublin
Continue from shannon region to Dublin area again. Then on to a visit of The National Stud in Kildare - the famous stud with Irish horses in Kildare. The last evening will be spent on our own in Dublin at different pubs I suspect…. Then going home the day after that.

WHY can’t it be June already…..?

*looking dreamy*

“Swedes take the whole summer off work. They have five weeks paid leave which they usually take in July. Once a Swede was told that he only had 5 weeks to live. I’ll hope it’s in July, he said”.

“Sweden The Secret Files” by Colin Moon

So now I’ve ordered our ferry tickets to our beloved island Fårö, Gotland, outside Swedens east coast, for the summer vacation. The islands is so popular that you have to order it months in advance to get tickets.

When? In July of course!

We’ve now uploaded photos from earlier summers:

Lifecruisers Fårö Summer 2004
Lifecruisers Fårö Summer 2005

I don’t know if I can recall this memory in any good way, because it’s so…. strange… but I’ll give it a try!

We were visiting some people we know in a forreign country. There was a lot of unusual strange weird things going on around that family and our visit there, but I’m not going to tell you all about that now, simply because it was too strange to even write down!!! I know I’m making you curious here, but I’m sorry… The full story would take about ages to write and you would still not understand a thing - we still don’t understand ourselves.

There were no seightseeing to talk about there, we still don’t count our visit there as we actually have visit that country. Anyway, one evening they were taken us out for a ride in their car and we were grateful to come out and at least see SOMETHING. Even though we at that time were a little bit frustrated of the situation, to put it mildly. We had travelled so far away to get there and for what…?

To begin with, they handled over a whiskey bottle to us in the back seat. (The same bottle Balvenie he got from us as a gift when we arrived, we know that’s his favourite brand). To drink in the car. They wouldn’t have any themselves, it was for us. OK, I can give them a little bit credit to say that it may had something to do with the fact that I had a tooth ache at the time, but that was not the whole reason. No, I’m sure that, at least one of them wanted something to accuse us of. And that was: us having drinking habits…

I really had a bad tooth ache, but we both also were stunned over the situation and quite frustrated, dejected over the whole stay there. So, I guess we both simultaneously just had enough, we started to drink whiskey in the car. I don’t even like that whiskey! It always the first time for everything. I’ve never been drinking in a car before, except from maybe some beer in my youth.

The main reason for driving around was that they should look at some house prospects. They wanted a new house. That was OK for us, if it had been one of the reasons for taking us out, but that was about the only thing we did. Driving around in the darkness looking at small streets and houses that we hardly could see anything of…

And drinking a lot of whiskey…

What could we do? We were tired of not doing anything, not having a nice time, so we got a little drunk. We decided to have fun anyway and we did. It’s a matter of attitude, ha? The only thing is: I don’t think that they understood that we had fun at them, how they could do this to us! Sometimes I couldn’t look at Mr Lifecruiser, because I may have reveiled the whole truth of why we were laughing so much under that actually so boring trip. We were even singing, despite none of us have any good voices, that was fun.

It truly was a hot car - because of the whiskey steams from the back seat ;-)

And yes, we were actually accused of being alcoholics later and for drinking beers and having fun in the evenings!!!

That was the first time in our lifes that we actually have been ACCUSED of having fun….

Whispering a secret: Actually we did have one habit that alcoholics have: we did hide a bottle of alcohol… It was that old bottle of Dom Perignon Champagne that we attended to give them as a gratitude for our stay there. We decided to keep it for ourselves, they wasn’t worthy of it, so the bottle flew back home with us again!

We hope that you haven’t missed the fantastic map service on the internet to look up other blogs in certain areas of interest or get to know the local time in certain places.

Just click some where on the map and you get the local time, international calling code, area code and some blogs from that area - can it be any easier?

There even are features for making friends, travel information and more, maybe not so interesting things….

Gchart gets local time or local blogs

At last, done with our Flickr Pro account!!!

We have a lot of photos to choose between so I suspect that we’ll have a lot to do for a long time ahead sorting out the good ones and uploading all of them to flickr….

The first ones out is from our journey to the guest ranch in Paraguay and Iguazu falls, after that it will be a few from Brazil and then from our other passed journeys too.

Take a peek at our Flickr photostream at their site OR by the cool photo badge (flash) in the right sidebar on this page. We have even added a menu choice “Photo” in the top of this blog, which will take you to our flickr photostream.

Enjoy our photos :-)

During the year of 2004 and 2005 we did quite a lot of travelling. It was our intention to write something about them here, but we simply have been to busy. We’ll se when we have the time for that.

We will be publishing a photo gallery shortly, so keep your eyes open for that!

This will be a summarize instead, just to mention where we’ve been.

Here’s the travel list of 2004:

- Dröbak/Oslo, Norway, 5 days
- Helsinki, Finland, 48 hours cruise
- Fårö/Gotland, Sweden, 1 week
- Milano, Italy, 4 days
- Algarve, Portugal, 1 week
- Paris, France, 4 days
- Fårö/Gotland, Sweden, 1 week
- Reykjavik, Iceland, 8 days *)
- Fårö/Gotland, Sweden, 4 weeks
- Gothenborg, Sweden, 1 day
- Aalborg, Denmark, 3 days
- Sylt, Germany, 2 days
- Copenhagen, Denmark, 1 day
- Mullsjö, Sweden, 1 day
- East coast/Higlands, Scotland, 8 days *)
- Crete, Greece, 2 weeks *)

*) The favourites from 2004 (except from Fårö which always will have a special place in our hearts!)

NOTE: The other trips were very nice they too, we just sorted out the absolute favourites. The lists is sequenced from the beginning of the year and forward.

It was our intention to go to Malaysia at a Spa and Golf resort for 2 weeks and The Philippines for 2 and a half month in the beginning of 2005 too, but after we (both!) had pneumonia and the tsunami came in, we cancelled the trip. It took us a quite a while to recover, we have never ever been so sick in our whole lives.

The travel list of 2005:

- London, England, 4 days
- Fuerteventura, Spain, 2 weeks
- Amsterdam/Haarlem, Holland, 4 days
- Fårö/Gotland, Sweden, 1 week
- West coast/Higlands, Scotland, 2 weeks *)
- Fårö/Gotland, Sweden, 6 weeks
- Cleveland/Ohio, U.S, 1 month
- Caacupé/Asuncíon, Paraguay, 14 days *)
- Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 3 days
- Natal, Brazil, 14 days

*) The favourites from 2005 (except from Fårö which always will have a special place in our hearts! We can repeate this how many times you want :-)

All trips except from the one to U.S were planned by ourselves, searching for all the information and booked at the internet. We don’t count the trip to U.S because that was a combination of visiting family and business, so there were no exploring of the country involved there. We wish to go to the U.S again sometime to explore at least some of the country and enjoy it.

Now we’re planning to stay at home for a while. We think… You’ll never know with us, suddenly we may take off somewhere again. But we have some important stuff to take care of this year, so it may not be as much travel as earlier, if we’re unlucky…

There are a lot of wonderful places were we want to go!!!

Miss ass Lifecruiser has reported that she arrived safe in Chicago, nothing *b* happened, no hijacking of the airplane, no airplane crash - nothing - except from a little bit of stomach pain. (We think she was a little nervous to meet her Love again :-)

She did go there with suitcases that were totally stuffed, so we wonder how long she will be there this time….?

WARNING: Miss ass Lifecruiser is on her way here! Everything can happen…

Just thought that it would be fair with a little warning. It always happens things around her. Not her fault, it just does for some strange unkown reason.

I wonder what will happen this time…. ? *nervous wreck*

Remember what happened the last time? I certainly does, it left a ugly scar on me!

Better not to think about it. We are going to have SO FUN!

After all, she is flying back to Chicago, Illinois again, to her Love and we really don’t know when we are going to able to meet again.

So if we are not writing new post in the same pace as usual, there is 2 alternatives:

1. We are having way to fun to have time to write.
2. Unusual things are happening us that keeps us occupied.

Both alternatives actually is bound to happen…..

Let us introduce you to one of our many PETS. This pet is a very very bad boy.

He humped Mr Lifecruisers leg one morning in the kitchen, obvious craving for some pet-thing… Luckily I heard Mr Lifecruisers scream for help and rescued him.

We suppose that it happened because he had a wild party all night long with a lot of his petbuddys, suffering from a bad hang over and - obviously - a lack of girls at the party.

There was his petbuddys, totally beaten by all the drinks, laying all over the floor, none of them were possible to talk any sense to. As usual, he only have buddys like that.

We are very concern about where he is going. *shaking our heads like every concerned parent would do*

Say Hello to Harry Petter caught at the very act:

OK, it might not be the best shot we taken, but how easy is it to take the picture when Mr Lifecruiser is shaking his leg all the time to get rid of the humping pet…?

This is a very special pet and he is rather demanding, we have to watch him all the time, he is always up to something. Come to think about it, maybe he is influenced by me…? *scary thought*

Once when we were in Scotland riding The Jacobite steam train, he was totally freaking out of control. He had set in his mind to step up on the roof on the train and was humping Mr Lifecruisers leg again!

OK, Mr Lifecruiser was on his way up on the roof too, but hey, there is a difference between them. I think….

So, there was Mr Lifecruiser, hanging out of the train halfway up on the roof, Harry Petter humping his leg as hard as he could, screaming about justice and me humping (?!) Mr Lifecruisers other leg, desperate to not let him go up there!!!

Ahh, that was a sight for gods, I almost thought that they was going to make a new movie about it ;-)

Come to think about it, maybe there is a movie about it somewhere, there is a lot of people with videocameras sneaking around everywhere nowadays… Probably we are just now shown in Japan somewhere…

Of course, my only concern was that Mr Lifecruiser would fall off the train and hurt him self. I mean, if so, who would carrie all my luggage for the rest of the trips? A wife always have to think practical.

Can you please recommend any sort of retreatment for this bad behaviour from him? Ehh.. I mean them…?