Here’s the most recent one (Ekängsturen from the leaflet I got from tourist information):

Ekängsturen

The paler part of the route was added manually, my GPS batteries died in Tallboda.

Despite the cold Sunday was a nice sunny day, so we went on an outing to Vadstena:

Lake Vättern was both frozen and covered in snow and it was pretty cold wandering around.

The flight is pretty long, but fortunately we were able to start from Linköping and fly via Amsterdam. Unlike the last few times I’ve flown via Schiphol we didn’t have hours of hanging around there.

Most of my time was spent working, but I did have a free weekend and Adrian and Amy managed to travel down from Vancouver. It was really good to see them again and catch up over some beers and nice meals.


Here are some more pictures:

The journey is pretty easy, Ryanair fly direct from Skavsta to Wrocław, so it’s just the usual torments of flying with an airline that hates passengers. We got there about lunchtime, checked in at the Scandic and then wandered down to the market square for a beer and some solid Polish food.

It was a really fun week, the team took us to lots of nice restaurants for lunch and it’s always good to spend some time with people you normally only see by video-conference. I especially liked the Spiż bar/brewery on the square, whenever you bought a beer you got handed a lard sandwich to go with it. Food and drink are very cheap compared to Sweden, especially lunch at Miś Bar — where you can get platefuls of dumplings for a few złoty.

It’s a city full of statues and monuments, this one was right across the road from the hotel:

We started off with Midsummer weekend in Stockholm, enjoying the sunshine and seeing the wildlife at Skansen. We also visited the Vasa museum and saw the changing of the guard at the palace.

We had a lovely morning close to lake Vättern at Omberg, where we also visited the ruins of the monastery at Alvastra. The tops of the ruined walls have been covered and then flowers grown on top.

During the week we also took a trip along the Göta canal from Berg to Borensberg with the M/S Wasa Lejon. It was a very relaxing trip, although we were puzzled about the people queuing an hour before departure.

Eleanor come over to join us for a long weekend, so we spent Saturday and Sunday in Kalmar. For some reason I don’t seem to have taken any pictures with Eleanor in… On the way back on Sunday we visited Vadstena again, although the weather was much better than the last couple of times I’d been there.

I started off walking up Vasavagen to Raoul Wallenberg’s square.

On the way up to the cathedral there’s another statue sitting outside the Länsmuseum and lots of flowers covering this walkway.

Up at Trädgårdsforeningen they were celebrating 150 years since the society was formed, with music and dancers on the stage. Other people were just sitting in the sunshine or playing volleyball.

This weekend is also Linköping’s harbour festival, although there’s little left of the once-busy harbour. On both sides of the river there were stages, beer tents and various activities going on. They’ve even made a beach outside the Scandic hotel.

I set off up Vasavägen, past the Länsmuseum (which I’ve still never been inside) to the cathedral. It looked beautiful in the low sunshine but it was tricky to find an angle where there weren’t too many trees in the way. I like the way the steeple looks against the sky in this photo.

From the cathedral I walked on to Trädgårdsföreningen, one of the bigger parks in the city. I was hoping it would be lit nicely, but I’d spent too long in bed today and the sun had disappeared behind buildings. I had to content myself with climbing up the hill to the Belvedere, which was still in sunlight. Unfortunately the ground around it was strewn with the rubbish from last night’s celebrations: broken glass, cigarette ends and spent fireworks.

Just outside the park I noticed that the brutal chimney structure of the University Hospital’s boiler house looked interesting against the sky. I’ll have to try again when the sun is shining on the glass side. On that edge of the park is the Linköping beekeepers’ society, complete with a little sign warning pedestrian of the danger.

A few hundred meters away is another, smaller, green space in the city. The Tinnerbäck, a small stream (“bäck” means the same as “beck” in English) that fills the open-air swimming pool, flows over a small waterfall beside the new cycle bridge.

Then I walked down, through Hejdegården to the river Stångå (or should it be the river Stång? “å” means small river). Ducks were feeding on a small patch of ice where the Tinnerbäck flows into the river, or at least they were until someone started feeding them further downstream. Northwest along the river from here you can see the Drottningsbron (which used to open to allow shipping acces to Linköping’s harbour) and the district heating plant.

I finished off by continuing along the bank of the river to where the harbour used to be, now an industrial area that the local authorities are planning to raze and replace with a new travel centre. Here’s one final picture, the district heating plant that keeps my house warm and gives me huge amounts of lovely hot water.

If you have Google Earth installed on your computer you can follow the route using this file. I’d recommend turning on 3D buildings and setting “Show balloon when tour is paused” on the touring tab of the options (“Tools” menu, “Options…” on Windows).

Of course on Christmas morning we had to go for a refreshing stroll on the beach:

If was pretty cold and windy, but we soon got back to the house and warmed up ready for a delicious goose dinner.

Mum and Dad came out to visit me for a few days, against all the warnings of my colleagues (the weather is notoriously bad here in November). We were quite lucky with the weather, less lucky with catching tourist attractions open. For example, in Vadstena the main attractions are only open on weekdays during winter.

Here are Mum and Dad outside the Arbetets museum (Museum of Work) in Norrköping:

I also just bought myself a Roomba robot vacuum cleaner:

It should make keeping the many square metres of floor space in my apartment clean.

Update: Should be finished now, although there may be some parts that I’ve missed.