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During the long summer holidays, my parents came for a second visit to Sweden. Since their first visit in 2010 (see the full account here), many things has changed and this was reflected on the things we did during the vacations. Two major changes were that we moved into a house that are located out of the city and that we now have a car. We therefore spend more time away from the cities (we did much of the tourist things last time), and also traveled a bit more by car to see some of the things Sweden has to offer in the summer.

Below are a few pictures of their visit:

Room for our guests.

Very Local:

We had a few braais at our house.

Braaing some of the sausages that we made ourselves. 

A fire!

 We also spent some time on the river that we have access to.

Outing on the river.

Our house from the river.

When we have guests, we often use them for cheap labour (as we did when my sibling and her husband came to visit). This time I had a project to install a cat door in one of the basement windows. My dad and I thus removed a window, built a platform and a insulated wooden door to fit the window and installed the door into it.

Cat door from the inside.

Access to cat door from outside under the deck. 

(Side note: the cat door is an electronic door that locks during the night and they cannot go out. However they can always enter since it unlocks when the chip in their necks are scanned but this means only our cats can enter. We chose this place - under the deck - since it is a bit more protected from the wind, rain and snow. Also our doors are double and a single cat door becomes tricky to install. In the winter I will build a box onto the platform to keep the opening a bit more covered.)

We also had several long walks from the house enjoying the summer weather.

Local:

Moving a bit further we explored the town and the surrounding areas.

We went to a forest close by to pick mushrooms that we subsequently ate.

Finding the yellow gold.

Cooking the pickings.

Closest cities:

The closest cities to us is Gävle and Uppsala. We went to both for a few interesting activities.

Morning fika in Uppsala

Strolling past the castle

River and Cathedral. 

No visit to Sweden is complete without visiting IKEA. We spent some time strolling through the shop and also had an IKEA lunch. During our visit to IKEA we also visited several of the other shops in the surrounding area.

Lunch at IKEA

We also took a boat trip from Uppsala on Mälaren during one evening.

Departing.

View on the lake.

In Gävle we walked through the streets and enjoyed a street festival.

River running into the sea through Gävle. 

Driving around:

Having a car meant we could drive around an we visited several of the small towns and villages.

Österbybruk during a Sunday drive. 

Sculpture at Östhammar - at the Baltic sea. 

An interesting outing was when we visited Gårdsjö Älgpark. The park is located about an hour's drive from us and got to meet several of the residents (both human and elk). This visit is recommended for anyone who want to have a close encounter with these awesome beasts.

Feeding the small beast.

Female elk up close.

Male elk strolling past. 

The 10 days flew past very quickly and sadly the visit was over.

Next year, Carina's parents plan to come for a second visit (they have also been here while we were still city dwellers) during the summer while at the end of next year my parents plan to brave the Swedish winter. We are looking forward to both these visits and hope that this will inspire more friends and family from abroad to make the trip to us.

We are however already back to the salt mines and hope to surface again a bit during winter...

R&C