Lifecruiser

The days goes so fast so fast and soon it will be monday and time for our trip to US! We have been real busy with all the preparations before the trip. Pheeeew, there is so many things to take care of. Hundred and one little things but that seems to take a long time to accomplish.

In fact, our dinner was late because of too much to do, so I was really seroiusly starving, so we ordered a pizza (to share) for once and I was so hungry that I actually took a bite of the fork!!!! Ohhh, my poor teeth…. Sorry, Miss Ass. Lifecruiser, I tried to do my best to sympatize with your tooth-breaking the other day, but I FAILED.

I am very satiesfied that I already picked out the clothes (the favourites!) I am taking with me, very few.

I count on buying new ones over there.

Mr Lifecruiser is slighty better than me on packing his. He just throw something in it in the last second…

We will have two half empty that we can fill up with some good stuff on the way home :-)

And there is always the hand luggage too…

Today we were at a fashion show in a Galleria and I just could not resist buying a pair of jeans with a jacket that really matched each other. We really liked it a lot both of us. I wanted to be more “up-to-date” and not so old and boring I guess ;-)

This will be my special “airplane-clothes” this time:

When out travelling around the world it could come in handy with this Earthquake Monitor - hey, it is not our meaning to scare you up, but it is good-to-know-facts!

We had booked a journey to Malaysia and the Philippines in Januari this year. We were going to stay in Malaysia for two weeks at a Golf & Spa Resort Hotel and really get spoiled. Then we were suppose to head for The Philippines and The island Boracay and stay there for 1,5 month…. *dreaming*

Now, it is a strange thing here. Mrs Lifecruiser seems to have some kind of spell put on her, beacuse where ever she goes - where the weather conditions normally would be good - she get bad weather. We do not know what evil she has done to deserve this, other from being a freak and a hungry monster we can not think of anything.

This time, what happened just before we should leave? Yes, you have guessed right, The Tsunami came. It smashed in over the same coast line in Malaysia where we should stay. Luckily for us, this time, we were not there yet, but this still ment that we did not get the pleasure of enjoying this trip! There was no way that we could go there and enjoy anything after seing all the news from the tsunami, pictures of the hit rolling around in our heads.

So we did stay at home and instead donated money to all the poor victims that were there.

Afterwards we did a check up with the facts of earthquakes and tsunamis in all that area and yes, it could be a risky area to visit, but then of course: how could you ever know in advance about any disaster???!! Ever so often the nature beats us. Just look at the Katrina disaster now.

You will never know where nature hits, but you can not go around and thinking about that all the time either. We must do what we came to the earth to do: just LIVE the best way we can.

We maybe will go there another year instead, The Philippines seems so very beutiful. We have friends that use to go there every year, for many years now, that is how we became interested of going there. They have only good things to say about it!

Another strange thing is: when we go to places where we NOT expect the weather to be fine, it has been better than it use to be… For example when we went to London and Iceland it was surprisingly fine weather there! Even when we were in Scotland it was not as bad as it could have been.

But we still wonder: will there be bad weather on our next trip? In that case maybe The US should put up an early warning systems for visitors with a spell on them….?

EARLY WARNING! Lifecruiser is coming to the US, Ohio the 19th of September!!!!!

Well, well, now we are getting some where in all our things we have to do since returning home!

Today we updated earlier post from our trip to Gotland, with some pictures. Have a peek!

Earlier post about Medevial clothes
Earlier post about Medevial Trilogy on Gotland

  Do not have the time (or money) to go
  to the US? Then you can wait and
  travel in your imagination when you
  are reading about our trip!

Yes, now we have booked a trip there, from the 19th of September to the 17th of October - so do not miss when we report from Ohio and surroundings!

*we are smiling and smiling and smiling very big from ear to ear all the time and there is no way to get rid off the silly smile so you just have to smile back to us and be happy for us*

Yeeeeeeeah!!!!! We are going to the US!!!!!!!!

*singing the national anthem*

We have one trip planned for the moment and that is to Paraguay in November. It feels really exciting to have something so very interesting and fun to look forward to!

We are going to stay at a ranch there and are allowed to help them (don’t know if we are any good at it though!)driving the herds of horses and cattle, branding the calves, the taming of colts and medical treatments and vaccinations.

We will se how much ridning we can cope with, not much I am afraid, because of my back, but I am glad just to be around there and see them working and learn a thing or two about their country and culture.

They also gives the opportunity to take both tennis and riding lessons, as well as lasso lessons!

You will get a report afterwards, how sore our butts are, how much cowboys there are in us and how much we enjoyed our stay there with all the nice people at the ranch :-)

Take a look in to it: Estancia Aventura

Do not miss the pictures on their start page! Just wonderful, we got really excited. *jumping up and down*

Please, let us know if you have been there already and what your experience of it was!

We are also gonna do the excursions to the breathtaking waterfalls of FOZ DE IGUAZU, which is on the border between Paraguy, Argentina and Brazil and people claim it to be even more beutiful then Niagara falls.

Well, maybe we now get the opportunity to compare theese two, because we maybe will go to US soon, if everything works like it should… Can not say more for the moment….

From Paraguay we are flying to Rio de Janeiro, staying there for 3 nights and then we continues to Natal, which have the finest beaches in Brazil….. Do I need to say any more….?

*we keeps smiling and smiling silly happily*

Natal Travel Guide

All about Paraguay
Birdlife in Paraguay
Asunción

Here comes a report of amusements during the medevial week on Gotland, what you can expect when you go there next year.

You are going to travel there of course?!

- Market with a lot of medevial things
- Poeta Magica, Cultus Ferox, Pisces Dei (medevial music)
- Tournaments and Archery shows
- Jester groups, fire-eaters, circus
- The trilogy and other lecture
- The Monk ball, popular soccergame
- Medevial camps
- Medevial dances
- Walking tours, guided tours
- Concerts, musicals
- Gutnic Tales
- Medevial parade
- Feasts to participate in

And of course, all the participants and visitors is partying in the evenings at the medevial restaurants, The Grim Hare or Clematis.

Then, when you go home, in the middle of night through empty old streets in Visby, maybe catching some monk strolling by in front of one of the churchs, you really feel like you are in the middle age.

In both senses; you are dressed up like an medevial AND you are sooo very tired after a long fun day and evening, that you fells like you are too old…

C U there next year!

Waited too long? We know that we promised you to report some more from Gotland, but at the time we were there we did not get the chance to do that, so here we write some more about it. We always keep our promises :-)

We went to a medevial trilogy there, which I hope will be there for next year too, because it was really educational about Gotlands medevial history. But in a fun and easy way, not so boring dry as usual…. So we really recommend it for next year!

Ohh, and be sure to come in your medevial outfit to really blend in and feel the timestamp!

Catch the story:

The year is 1313. Swedish king is Birger Magnusson (with his wife Märta from Denmark) and his financies is really lousy, he has borrowed money that he has to pay back. Now he want to raise the taxes for Gotlands folk (”Gutar”).

And you can imagine how unpopular that was - just like nowadays!

Day 1) Medevial session of the district court in Tingstäde and the threat from the king Birger. Announcement of disembarking of the kings army (”Svear”). Sorry, we missed that part so can not report more about it.

Day 2) The battle at Röcklinge, at Laikarhaid in Lärbro. A historical professor was helding a lecture for us about it. And he did it really well! I have never heard such a different and FUN lecture that kept your interest all the time. And if you despite that loosed your concentration for a while, he woke you up by yelling loud. He was good at it, we liked him a lot.

Then we got to see it with our own eyes, they played it out on the spot. After some negotiations that did not go well, there was a real battle at the field with Svear in armours, knights, archers, Gutar (local farmers). The riders from Svea was on big swedish horses and the ones from Gotland was on small local ponys, called Gotlandsruss on swedish.

But still, the farmers did beat the kings army! Yeeeahhhh!

Ooooops, they nearly chopped the kings head of, but a farmer saved him in the last second. Pheeeww…

Day 3) The kings feast in Hejnum. He and the queen invites the countryjudges and Gotlands folks to a big country feast. The king made the farmer (that saved his head) to a knight. There was medevial music, food, jesters, fire-eaters and entertainers of all kinds.

And what happened after the feast? Then it was time for the hang-over…..

The (not?) fun part is that they still had to pay the higher taxes, somehow they messed it up afterwards. No one knows exactly what happened. The burghers in Visby probably saw that they would gain some benefits from the king, so they sold them out in the end.

The king got his money to pay his debts and the farmers had to pay the higher taxes. The same as today, we are sorry to say.

Anyway, it was a smart way to get the facts to stick in our heads - at least for a while!

Wow, what a cool application, we stumbled over Google Earth today which truly is amazing!

We just love to be able to zoom in to places that we are going to travel to.

As they say them selves:

“Dive right in - Google Earth combines satellite imagery, maps and the power of Google Search to put the world’s geographic information at your fingertips.

Do not miss that you can search for example: “hotels near picadilly circus” among other searchterms.

Be sure to read the help information, you get a lot of very useful tips there!

Go around the world with Google Earth

Feel like singing - in the rain perhaps? *smiling big*

We were yesterday and went to the karaoke evening at Sudersands badrestaurang on Fårö. They have karaoke evenings every wednesday during the summer, but next wednesday will be the last one for the season. Then, I guess, the summer is over in Sweden….?

It is this local friendly atmosphere there, where people can enjoy them self and no matter the voice, the support from the audience is huge. It is a really nice fellow that is organizing the singers, Gert Hansson.

So if you ever are on Gotland and want a karaoke evening on your party, make sure to hire him!

Well, that was our share of the medevial week in Visby, Gotland, Sweden. It has been truly amazing to see all this medevial things, clothes and to taste wild pig etc.

The first day we were strolling around in our own clothes from the 18th century (actually the clothes we were wearing at our wedding last year). We even did wear wigs and mine is about 24 cm high! I had to duck everywhere or I got stuck with the wig.

Boy, did we get peoples attention… pheeeeeew…. All the tourist wanted to take pictures of us and sometimes with them standing in between us too. I cant even guess how many countries our picture is spread to now :-)

Another guy that was standing out from the big crowd was a man dressed in women clothes from around 1975, from a boutique called “Polarn och Pyret” that was very popular during that period. He was a brave man - a real viking….?

We even bought our selves some medevial costumes to really blend in among all the others. That was really fun. Mr Lifecruiser was sooooo cool in his different kind of hats we managed to find for him. One of them even had horsehair hanging out of it. Just outstanding!

Most of our clothes we bought at lunar plexus design, sorry that their website is only in swedish, but you can look around at the pictures. It is not all of their clothes, they have more, nicer ones too.

I even bought a dress from another place too, a kind of medevial and fantasy mix, more suitable when it is sunshine and warmer outside. It was in a boutique in Visby, on the mainstreet there, Adelsgatan, Wåtz wear.

The same goes for another place with medevial things, handelsgillet.

Yesterday evening we went to the restaurant and pub called Bistra Haren (The Grim Hare), to listen to medevial music and relax among other people in medevial clothes. It is on the side of the S:t Nicolai ruins, so the feel of the medevial time was complete!

They serve - among other food - something called poor-man’s stew, all to get the feeling right. The music was very special and people were dancing in an medevial way, really interesting. We really liked that place a lot. We will defenitely come back there next year.

Another medevial restaurant that is very popular is Clematis - we tried to get in there but it was full at the time.

Time to leave Visby now.

C U somewhere else soon again :-)