21 July, 2011

Road trips and sunsets

Again! Sorry for my absense - but to save myself further apologies about missed blogging days, I should let you know that the internet where I am is patchy and slow at best, and my smartphone is not smart enough to blog without costing me an arm and a leg in roaming charges :)
I also ask your forgiveness for certain spelling errors I may miss - as the computer I'm working on underlines every. other. word... because it operates in Polish.

Shall we continue with the journey? Yes.

When I left you, we were hoping to travel to Torslanda. Well... it rained, we got lazy, and dinner ran late (not in that order), so we decided not to go after all. Instead, we enjoyed time with the family and had amazing Swedish cheesecake in which, after I ate a peice, I could hear myself getting fatter. Here is an example. I am the larger human in this photo, and still in my PJs. Don't judge. 



We departed Gothenberg on Tuesday morning. After waving goodbye, two regular sized adults, a petite adult, and a heavy adult (ahem...) plus a Maine Coon (gigantic!) in a cage between the backseat passengers all sandwiched into a tiny little car. For 7 hours. 
Fortunately I was elected to sit up front because of my car sickness. This is probably one of the few times I will ever appreciate motion sickness.


 We were on our way! It was definitely confusing for me at first, being on the other side of the road again... I hate switching back and forth. It's hard for my brain to switch sometimes. Again, fortunately, I wasn't driving. I really enjoyed being passenger and being able to see the beautiful countryside and buildings. 




V and I really wanted to visit this museum, but because we had the cat, we worried he'd get too hot in the car. We just waved at it as we passed.




After a couple hours, we stopped for lunch. I couldn't tell you where we stopped - except it was near a lake. It was beautiful. The rest stop was one of the nicest rest areas I've ever been to along a freeway. It offered picnic tables, which were clean and painted nicely, and bathrooms - which were port-o-let-esque, but still moderately clean considering the amount of traffic they get.
There was no garbage on the ground, no flies, nothing annoying... it was lovely. 




After a while, and a good stretch, it was time to hit the road again.



We passed farms and fields... I always love it when farmers (or whomever) wrap their bales in white. They look like marshmallows!!!



After a little while, V's dad asked me if I wouldn't mind driving for a bit as he was getting tired. I obliged and took the wheel for a couple hours. Obviously, I did not take photos while driving - but neither did anyone else... so imagine more countryside, and beautiful sun... then a thrashing rain storm. We were driving merrily along, and entered a rain storm. It wasn't so bad at first - but soon visibility became very low. Because of the load the car was carrying, we couldn't go much more than 100 km per hour (60mph) which made passing very difficult. The unfortunate thing was that passing was necessary because there were giant lorries stirring around the rain, and splashing up on us so that I couldn't see. Finally, we made it out safely and all was well. 200km later, we pulled over outside of Stockholm and V's dad took the wheel again. V read his book the entire time, unpreturbed.


More farms...


And more driving...


but we finally made it!!

It was time for a good long "plop" on the couch, with our feet up and enjoying the evening. The cat, especially was glad that we were home as his situation was particularly tight.

The next morning, V's mom, V and I went off to the store to buy essentials.


It was very fun seeing all the interesting and new things for sale in a Swedish shop. Like this pistachio bread, for instance...

... I thought it was jello at first.
Then there was the fish. A whole refrigerated section dedicated to sea-things. I have tried every single one of those jars of Herring (in the middle) back at Easter time when we visited Sweden. V's brother-in-law (who is Swedish) brought them for us to sample during our feast. You may not believe me when I tell you that the purple one is the best, but trust me. It is. Save yourself the trouble.


We walked around a bit, and enjoyed the local suburbs. In the evening, we went 20km west to enjoy some scenery while V's parents went fishing.

I love the architecture here. Don't let the sky in this photo fool you. To the left, there was a gorgeous, amazing sunset...

 ... which I will now share with you.
Those are V's parents paddling out to where the fish were JUMPING out of the water.
It was amazing.


Every minute, the sunset got more and more beautiful, and V and I had the perfect view.



In the original photo, if you enlarge it, you can see a fish jumping right out of the water next to V's parents' boat. If you look really close, here you can see it just to the left of them - but it's a tiny speck...


During those golden minutes of fantastic sunset, V and I had a blast photographing things in a new light, so to speak.




V's parents caught a lovely fish (which I didn't photograph, because I felt weird about it... which is weird in and of itself, I know), brought it to shore, and we carried it back to the dock and went home. All in all, it was a perfectly wonderful day.

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