Salanderskan

Portland

2012-02-04T12:00:00.000Z

Last weekend Hubby and I set out for a photographic weekend in Dorset. The plan was to get up really early and get some shots of sea and the rising sun. Hubby had done his research and found an island called Portland which sounded ideal for our mission. It had a lighthouse and some interestingly shaped cliffs that seemed to be a promising backdrop for our photos.

When we arrived to the hotel it was all dark, windy and cold. The prospect of getting up at 6 o'clock in the morning was not very appealing! But said and done, at 6:45 am we were back in the car heading down to Portland Bill. It was still dark as we 5 minutes later arrived by the lighthouse. Heavily laden with tripod, camera and all its gear, wearing multiple jumpers, hats and gloves we stumbled our way down to the shore. And what a sight greeted us!

Portland is mainly known for its stone, so the island is more or less one giant quarry. For hundreds of years we have been hacking away the rocks from the Portland cliffs, leaving a half man-made and half natural eroded shoreline. This morning the sea was happily crushing itself against the shore whilst the occasional cloud scampered across the dark blue sky waiting to get lit up by the sun. Well worth getting up for :-)

Two and a half hours later we rolled back to the hotel for a well deserved breakfast, before heading back out again for a stroll around the island.

Check out my flickr to see more photos from the weekend.

Atacama desert

2011-03-25T22:55:00.004Z

After having spent five chilled days on the pacific island Rapa Nui (Easter island) we have now arrived to the desert. The Atacama desert to be precise.

As expected it is rather stark, which I think suits my minimalist streak. We drive through vast plains of sand/rock/salt. At first it seems all very uniform but the closer you look, the more variation you see. The way the rocks are scattered and formed, the ripples in the sand and the crust formations of the salt. It is all fascinating and rather soothing. And to add to the beauty, the peaks (some volcanic, some snow-covered, some neither) of the Andes borders the plains.

Most amazing are the colours though. The various shades of red, green and white. We were amazed by the Rainbow valley where minerals colour the mountains. It is hard to describe but the two shades of green rocks are etched in my retina.

The Atacama salt lake is equally amazing. As the salt layer is so deep, the surface is all crackled up in a salty crust shaping incredible formations. This is were the flamingos like to hang out. We visited them the other morning just as the sun was rising. We had the fortune to watch the flamingos changing colour as the first sun rays of the morning reached them. And yes, we did managed to capture a photo or two of the occasion.

But most amazing must be the lagunas up in the altiplanico, above the 4000 meter mark. We took our 'little' jeep and followed the tour tracks and beyond. Only meeting the odd big lorry driving from Argentina to Chile. (Ok, there was two other tourist cars but we left them by the first lake, so they don't count.)

Again the colours were amazing. And all the mountains and rolling valleys looked so smooth you almost wanted to stroke them. I'll have to let my photos do the talking now.

The famous Mo'ais on Rapa Nui

Pretty sunset on Rapa Nui

Rainbow valley in Atacama desert

Flamingos at sunrise

More sunrise

Laguna in Altiplanico

Musings from an airport

2011-03-21T22:51:00.001Z

We are slightly naughty on this trip. We are using the airplanes as busses. But frankly there is no other doable way for us to travel as Chile is a rather long country and we only got three weeks. So we have to make do for the environment another way. Does the fact that we turned off the heating at home count???

Anyway, we are getting to know the Santiago airport a bit. Yesterday we found out that there are only two places to eat in the domestic airport lounge - Starbucks and a Chilean Cafe. Starbucks being completely discounted we tried the Chilean. It did very nice Chilean burgers - thinly sliced steaks and no mince meat in sight - however it wasn't the quickest. Don't think I've eaten that big a meal so fast in a long time...

We also learnt that the loos are being refurbished. Doh!

When writing this we are trying out the poshest looking restaurant. Mainly because they seemed to have the best wine list. It's not bad. The steaks are tender. They didn't have the wine we wanted though but we got to try a Pinot noir from Casablanca valley instead and it's good for people watching.

We've been watching an importer/breeder of Beagles arriving with three puppies. The puppies were so cute and well behaved. I just wanted to go up and give them a cuddle. We think the bloke came from America or Canada. He was very pleased when his fellow importer finally arrived after having called on the phone about five times. We got a bit concerned though when they left one of the puppies in his cage before one of them returned to pick him up after they had found a place to sit.

We then have the three guys working at the 'wrap your bag' station. Keenly looking for customers they approach most ladies walking past with a jammed packed bag. Are they their typical customer? Once they find a customer they skilfully wrap their bag in lime green cling film. I'm curious how you are meant to unwrap it once you arrive at you destination. Particularly if you're like us and don't travel with a Swiss army knife.

'Wrap your bag' men hard at work...

We have also got to try out the international departure lounge as we flew to Rapa Nui via Lima. Found a good restaurant there with very nice staff. But the best restaurant got to be the one in Lima. Had a delicious beef stir fry where they asked you how well cooked you wanted the beef! It was sooo yummy and cooked to perfection. A bit erratic service though.

Well I do start to feel like an expert on Santiago airport by now.

Chile, 7-21 March

Torres del Paine

2011-03-15T00:45:00.009Z

11 March 2011

Now it feels like the holiday has started. We've flown down to Punta Arenas and rented a pickup truck which we have driven north to Torres del Paine.

It is absolutely amazing here. Very pretty scenery and fantastic mountains. Today we hiked up for a closer look of Las Torres (the towers).

We set off at 9 o'clock and came back at 17:15 with rather tired legs. We had by then managed to cover about 20 km. Doesn't sound like much, but most of it was uphill/downhill. All in all we climbed about 750 m. That is a lot for little me. But I survived! And it was well worth it. The view of the three towers Torre Norte, Torre Central and Torre Sur was fantastic! And we were so lucky, the sun was shining and hardly no clouds covered the towers. All in all a very good day!

Our hike up to the Valle del France wasn't so lucky. We got the catamaran across Lago Pehoe to Guardieria Avanzada. As we got off the boat, the wind picked up and the rain started to pour down. Nothing to do but to get the waterproofs out and start the hike. For the first hour all you could see was the path below your feet and the feet of the fellow infront of you. Not terribly exciting, but a true Pantagonian experience according to the experts (i.e. hubby).

Once we rounded the corner and arrived at Lago Skottsberg the rain stopped and the hike started to become enjoyable. As we walked along the lagoon we spotted a wind. I'm not kidding you, I can now say that I have seen a wind!

As we were happily walking along the lake, enjoying the lack of wind and rain we all of a sudden heard a gust of wind approaching us. And it was approaching us fast. We looked up and believe it or not but we could actually see the wind as it approached us. It was like a lowish and fast-moving dust cloud swishing over the tree tops. It was incredible, the speed it moved with (windspeed here can get up to over 100 km/h), the sound it made and that it was visible to see as it moved across the valley. It was gone as quickly as it appeared. I was very glad I was firmly down on the ground.

Later on we saw some winds blowing across the lagoon. Again pretty awesome. The wind moved like a frontier, picking up water as it moved across the lagoon. At the end there was a wall of water probably 20 meter up in the air. Incredible!

As you might guess, the weather here is pretty varied and extreme. And what more, it can change within 15 min.

Coming back from our walk up the French valley, we had managed to get dry and started to look forward to a rest after having walked about 22 km. Guess what happened when we had only 2 km left. Yep, the rain started to pelt down. And it really hurts when the raindrops hit your face. So the only way forward was with the head down. I can't say I've seen much of Guardieria Avanzada.

So in between our two walking days we had a rest day. This meant that we piled onto two minibuses that slowly toured the national park. Stopping to watch 20 odd condors as they fed on a dead guanaco. I never thought I'd be lucky to see a condor up close and here I got to see a whole gang of them. They had several young ones with them. You can spot them as they are brown and not black and white as the adults. They also don't fly so well meaning that they have to stay with their mothers for up to two years.

Well, so far we have fully enjoyed Pantagonia. We have three more days to spend here. Right now I'm in a freezing cold dome, laying in a bed with fleece sheets, two blankets and a seriously thick duvet admiring the stars whilst listening to Bob Marley playing in the central dome. Time to sleep, tomorrow is another day.

A long way to Chile

2011-03-07T12:29:00.001Z

At university I was taught a concept called situated planning. Loosely it says all plans are made to be broken. In each situation a plan is changed and adapted to the circumstances. Nothing could be more true than our trip to Chile.

It started all good, we arrived at the airport plenty on time only to be told that our flight to Madrid had been delayed. By the time we landed in Madrid we saw our plane to Santiago leave the airport gate. Doh! Luckily we got rescheduled for the next flight the following night.

After a bit of replanning and rebooking of our travel plans in Chile we got to explore Madrid for a day. And have tapas and nice wine :-)

So a day late we finally arrived to the Elqui valley. Our main reason for coming here is its clear night skies.

So Pedro took us up the mountains along a very wiggly dirt track to observatorio de Pangue where we met Eric. He showed us exploding nebulas, black nebula, a broken star, galaxies and as the finale the glorious Saturn! It was amazing! It is incredible how many more stars you can see in the southern hemisphere. And with an 12 inch telescope.

The prettiest were the millions stars of the Omega centuri. You look at the sky with your naked eye and all you see is a bright star. Next you zoom in on this star and you see millions of tiny bright dots in a weblike formation. It does put things in perspective.

After finishing our breakfast we will slowly drive back to the airport and start our trip down south to Torres del Paine.

Our hotel Elqui domos, well tent really...

Very productive

2010-12-25T19:40:00.001Z

We had a late holiday again this year. This time we decided to stay home though. Which meant it was time for some more decorating. With the music room all finished, the computer room/ office was next in line.

A fair bit of holes needed to be filled in before we could start painting the walls in a French! white. Luckily hubby is really good at filling holes. I spent the time sourcing the perfect wall paper to feature on the walls next to the chimney breast.

After a couple of days of painting we were ready to tackle the wall papering. This was the first time we were wall papering without adult supervision. We decided to play it safe (actually we were slightly forced by the hand-painted wallpaper I bought) and started by putting up an underlining paper. By the time we started putting up the proper wall paper, we had got the hang of it.

After a bit of hard work we managed to get it all done in time for starting the Christmas celebrations. All left is sorting out the furnishing.

Apart from home decorating I also found time to sort through all my photos from Iceland. It was hard work to whittle them down to a manageable number, but I think I've almost managed it in the end.

Christmas is coming

2010-12-11T21:40:00.001Z

So it has started out quite promising. It's only 11 December and so far we have already had more then 10 cm of snow. Mind you it is all gone now, but they are promising more in a week's time. Maybe this will be a white Christmas after all!

Well, not to be deterred by vanishing snow! Christmas decorations can always help to get you back into the Christmas mood. Said and done, down from the attic came the Christmas tree and all the boxes with decorations.

A bottle of wine later and with some 'smakråd' (~advice) from hubby, the tree and the lounge were decorated. Doesn't it look pretty???

Boom Boom bar

2010-09-29T16:14:00.001+01:00

After an afternoon at sea we have ended up at the Boom Boom bar.

Here you can enjoy fabulous vanilla milkshakes or hot chocolate with rum.

It also provides plenty of entertainment. Yesterday we enjoyed watching the display by the locals lifting a big 2x250 bhp motorboat with a digger.

This morning this cute cat showed us her balancing act.

What will we see next???

Comedy vegetable

2010-09-28T09:56:00.001+01:00

It is really hard life we are living here. Got up at around 10, had a lovely breakfast on our top balcony (one of the four balconies). Two hours later we went for an easy stroll down the harbour to pick up our boat. A sweet little motor boat with a canopy to shade us from the sun.

We managed to skilfully motor our way out the harbour and around the peninsula to the next bay with a taverna. Obviously we deserved a beer after all that hard work.

After the 'beer pause' we climbed the hill to Spartochori. It's a pretty little village with tiny windy cobbled streets.

After strolling round the village we found this lovely pizzeria with a marvellous view. Time for lunch!

As we had finished the pizzas the owner started chatting with us. He was describing some sort of vegetable that they either use to make wine in or use as a decanter. We weren't entirely sure what he meant. All of a sudden he asked if we wanted to try. Okey we said and off he went.

We spotted him a moment later in the neighbour's house. Walking into her kitchen and coming out with a big knife. (She was busy moving and setting up her TV on her roof terrace. Daisy-chaining extension cords and dangling them down and through the window.) Our guy just went straight to a climbing plant and cut down it's one and only vegetable/fruit. To us he didn't even seem to live there! Anyway there seemed to be no hard feelings.

Back to the restaurant he gave us this phallic looking vegetable. Apparently some sort of courgette. And as far as we understood it goes white and the seeds inside dries so that you can pour them out. Next you rinse the inside and then you can use it as a decanter. Or maybe even to make wine. Who knows.

In any case, R is determined to bring it back home and try to grow it himself. We did get the instructions for that too.

New lights

2010-08-02T09:17:00.000+01:00

After a long wait Lombok finally called to let us know our lamp had arrived. Obviously I had to go and get it immediately. To my surprise the lamp was a bit on the heavy side. I got it out of the shop but quickly decided I needed assistance. A quick call and half an hour later hubby was there to pick me and the lamp up with the car.

Hubby continued to be a darling and spent Saturday afternoon fitting the lamp in our music room. Success! The lamp looks great!
hubby's blog posting

The rest of the weekend I spent finalising my lampshade project. It seemed a bit difficult to find the perfect shade so I decided to make my own. How hard could it be?

Well, I've kind of lost the feeling in my fingertips. The sewing was pretty tough from time to time But the shade is finished. A bit wonky, but that was part of the plan ;-)

Last days in Iceland

2010-06-06T21:33:00.001+01:00

On Friday Tryggve took us and a couple of other folks for a walk on the glacier. As it is a bit icy to walk on we got all geared up (utrustade med) with crampons (broddar) and an ice ace.

It was lots of fun and we both want to do more of this. We got to see at least a 50 meter deep hole, a couple of crevasses and glacier mice.

A glacier mouse is moss that has grown around a rock laying ontop of a glacier. As the ice melts, the mouse rolls over so that the moss can grow on all sides. They can apparently become pretty big.

Proud collector of volcanic rocks by Vatnajökull. I'm not telling you how many rocks i'm bringing home...but we did have a bit of overweight...

After playing on the glacier we went for a 7 km hike to get to a good view point over the glacier. Along the way we encountered this cool waterfall. Well, it was the basalt columns next to the waterfall that was really cool.

Saturday was puffins day! We got on the tractor tour to Ingolfshofdi. There we got to see lots of puffins. They are so cute and look slightly hopeless as they try to take off from the water. Managed to get a couple of good photos :-) including one when hubby was attacked by a big skua (a chicken-sized bird)

After the puffins it was time to say good-bye to Vatnajökull. We had another 450 km to drive before we reached the airport. At least we got a day and a half to cover the distance, so no rush.

Eyjefjallasjökull - the volcano!

There it is. The volcano that caused so much havoc. It was still only steaming as we went past it.

The whole area was covered by a steam/ash haze making it hard to see anything above a couple of hundred meters. But just as we went past it, there was a slight clearing in the haze and we could just make out the steam plume. It's very much in the centre of the photo.

There was a thin layer of ash covering the ground. And as you walked a small dust cloud arose underneath your feet.

As we countinued our drive we could see the damages made. The road had turned to gravel at a couple of places. The road barriers lay all twisted next to the road. And the flood plain was filled with water.

The Icelanders were busy rebuilding it all. Lots of diggers, trucks etc all around. Signs said it was all expectad to be back to normal in July this year. That is quick work!

Our final night was spent in a cabin in Hella. We decided that it's more fun out here in the wilderness than in a fancy hotel in Reykjavik.

By the time we hit the airport we had all in all driven 1497 km. Not bad! So we treated ourselves with a relaxing swim in the Blue Lagoon before our flight back to UK.

The end of a very nice birthday holiday!

Jökull day

2010-06-03T23:36:00.001+01:00

So today has been glacier day. We started off at the glacier museum in Höfn. Learning all about glacier, how they are formed, what they can do and so on. Most of all we learnt that jökull means glacier in Icelandic and is a rather popular name.

Brimmed with all our new knowledge we set off to visit Vatnajökull. The worlds largest glacier outside the arctic region! Which accidently has the amount of water that would equal 40 cm deep water covering the whole of Iceland. And during its fastest rush, it can move four meters in an hour. But generally it is pretty still. See I have learnt something today.

Our main target was the lagoon with icebergs, Jökulsárlón. Got to see plenty of them as we took a boat ride in the lagoon. And saw a seal too.

After that we had a small adventure on the beach. The hired car wasn't to keen on black volcanic beach sand. So we got a bit stuck. As I wandered off to get some help, hubby found some passing Germans to give the car a good push. Hurray, and we were off again.

Tomorrow is getting up close and personal with the glacier.

On the road

2010-06-03T21:33:00.001+01:00

Wednesday was driving day. It was time to go all the way from Myvatn to Höfn (top left-hand corner, out towards the top right-hand corner and down to the right-hand corner on the map, the red road).

We played it safe and followed the main road that circles around Iceland. It might be seen as a bit boring to follow the main road, but not in Iceland.

Here the main road is only one lane (körfil) in each direction and when crossing a bridge it goes down to one shared single lane. Mostly it is surfaced with asphalt, but there are also several stretches with gravel (grus). The longest being about 50 km!

You also meet the odd sheep on the road. Mainly they are good and stay next to rather than on the road. The baby lambs are so cute you just want to stop and give them a cuddle.

It did take us through some amazing landscape though. This little hut we found in Breiddalsheidi. It had two beds, some water and a bottle of vodka.

The 420 km took us through very varied landscape. We drove through:
- lunar landscape of black gravel
- yellow grass plains
- heather (ljung) fields
- moss covered pebble plains
- unearthly broken lava ridges
- bizarre lava sculptures
- deep green valleys
- mountain passes
- gravel mountains
- black beaches
- etc etc

Obviously we had to make pit-stops. Here we are enjoying waffles in Djupivogur.

As you can see we had by now we reached the sea.

Once we reached Höfn it was time to find a place for the night. Thursday will see us exploring Vatnajökull, the larges glacier in the world!

To Mars and back

2010-06-01T23:01:00.001+01:00

So everybody thinks that we are in Iceland, but in fact we have actually gone to Mars!

I'll let the photos speak for themselves today. They are all taken in Hevir (hot spring close to boiling) below Namarskard.

We kind off spent the whole day around this area. We had too much fun photographing. And the weather was slightly poorly.

When the rain rolled in we took cover in the local hot spring spa for an hour or two. All in all a very nice day!

Myvatn

2010-05-31T00:46:00.001+01:00

Today we left Reykjavik.

We got a plane to Akureyri. A small town, which reminded us of Ronneby. We had a quick explore and some lunch before we headed off in our hired car.

Along the way we stopped at Godafoss. A much smaller waterfall then yesterday's Gullfoss, but far more beautiful and photogenic. Probably because it was more accessible and less tourists. We had a fun time playing around there though.

Our target for the day was Reykjahlid by the lake Myvatn. Where we are going to stay for three days.

The drive was absolutely fantastic. Up and down, through the valleys, along some lakes. And all around us are flat topped volcanos. All more or less at the same height. Looks like someone has cut off the peaks with a big manchete.

As we got closer to Myvatn the grassy/heather (ljung) landscape changed into broken up black rocks.

We managed to arrive just in time for dinner. As it is a tiny village it was an easy choice to eat at the hotel. We couldn't have made a better call.

The food was absolutely fantastic. I started with smoked trout on black lava bread, followed by arctic charr with a lemon butter sauce. Absolutely yummy! Hubby went for the mushroom soup followed by lamb fillets.

After dinner we joined the locals in their thermal-heated swimming pool for some relaxation before bedtime. All in all a perfect birthday!

Golden circle

2010-05-29T18:27:00.001+01:00

Today we have continued in our touristic tracks and completed the golden circle. We thought we save hubby from driving today and had booked us a tour with Go travel Iceland.

Jens took us in his minibus first to Pengvellir national park. This is the site of the world's first parliament that met outdoors, beginning 930 AD and continued until 1798.

It is also where the tetonic plates north America and Eurasia meet. Or rather float apart causing a big rift valley and Iceland largest natural lake.

Next stop was Geysir. Unfortunately Geysir is dormant so we had to make do with its smaller sister. She was rather impressive too, erupting water as high as 20 meter every 7-10 minute. No iPhone photo of this though. It was hard enough to try to capture it with the proper camera.

Third stop was Gullfoss waterfall. Massive waterfall split into two levels. Also managed to get some lunch here. Traditional lamb soup, which reminded me very much of grandma's meat soup. Only they didn't have any klimp...

Time to return back to Reykjavik. On the way back we stopped at Kerid, a waterfilled volcanic crater. Great acoustics which apparently has catered for a live concert with Björk.

Lastly we popped in at a geothermal plant that produces electricity and heating by deep drillholes. All very facinating and completely suistainable.

Back at the hotel and it's time to make plans for the evening. Tomorrow we are off to Myvatn.

Exploration of Reykjavik

2010-05-29T17:35:00.001+01:00

Yesterday we explored Reykjavik on foot. It is a smallish city, easy to walk everywhere.

We started by getting to the top of Hallgrimskirkja to admire the view.

After that we walked down to the sea. It was a bit windy and cold there so we walked back up to town where it was nice and sheltered.

It was a nice and sunny day and all the icelanders were out enjoying it. It was also end of terms (skolavslutning) so all the kids were celebrating their last day in school before summer with games and a parade.

By the way, these photos were all taken about 11 o'clock at night when we were on our way back to the hotel from our dinner. Midnight sun is a great thing!

Summer dessert

2010-05-22T21:22:00.001+01:00

Summer is here! Had at least 23 degrees today! Obviously that meant a BBQ and eating outside.

We BBQd beautiful chicken satay (grillspett) from the local butcher. I couldn't decide which flavour I wanted so I got one each: BBQ, Chinese and Tikka. They were all very nice, even though they didn't entirely match. They were also beautifully cooked. Just perfectly cooked, still moist and no burnt bits! I might add slightly self-congratulatory that it was I who cooked them :-)

Anyway, as it is summer it is time for Eton mess as dessert. If you haven't had it yet, you should definately try it! Just whip some cream. Mix it with crumbled merengue and fold down some lovely berries. Couldn't be easier. That is probably why they call it Eton mess; couldn't expect those kids to be able to do more advance cooking without their personal chef...

Buddleia in the sunshine

2010-05-22T10:11:00.001+01:00

Got downstairs the other morning and found this fantastic light in the music room. Had to take a quick snap before rushing to work.

Buddleia

2010-05-10T21:28:00.001+01:00

The wallsticker for the music room arrived today, hurray. After a little bit of battle we managed to stick it onto the chimney breast. It looks all very pretty now!

My first elephant

2010-05-05T18:57:00.000+01:00

I've just spotted my first elephant in London.

This one I found in Hays gallery close to London bridge. The elephant is one of 250 elephants forming the London elephant parade. http://elephantparadelondon.org/index.html

I'll have until July to spot some more. Have you seen any?

Chair has arrived!

2010-04-30T16:37:00.000+01:00

Today we have got one step closer to finish our music room! Our newly purchased arm chair has just arrived. It isn't as big as I feared so we might even be able to fit in another one :-)

All we now have to wait for are the bookshelves. Another month until they arrive though :-/ In the meantime I'm on the hunt for some lights and a rug.

Easter weekend

2010-04-06T20:03:00.000+01:00

I've had a very nice Easter holiday. A whole five days off!

It started with mr and mrs J&L coming for a visit. We got to see all the 900 photos from their wedding, lucky us ;-). We also got to hear the stories from their honeymoon, no not the intimate ones...

Friday was all about chilling. Lots of chatting and relaxing before it was time for the newly weds to take the train home. Got some shopping done and then we were set for our big task...

Saturday, Sunday and Monday we spent scrubbing walls, filling holes, sanding and painting. Now the music room looks all pretty and serene in its new pale grey outfit (well technically the colour is called natural canvas).

All it needs now is some furnitures. The dresser and bookshelf is meant to arrive in May. But we still need to buy two arm chairs. We do have a couple potential ones that we want to go and see before any gets bought.

Obviously we had to treat ourselves in the midst of all that hard work. Being Easter and all I thought I'll try to bake a cake my mom used to bake around Easter. I didn't have any yellow chickens to decorate it with so I had to use some chocolate truffles instead. What a shame ;-)

Moving of a shed

2010-03-15T19:52:00.000Z

R&I asked us to come around on Sunday to help them move their shed. Here is how to move a shed:

Start with a bit of snack

Bow to the might shed

Place a man at each corner. Preferably on blocks of wood to make them taller

Think for a bit

Rope in some more people

Have a supporter

Hide in the shed for some more thinking after having moved the roof a bit

Move the roof back in place

Call it a day (more men needed) and have a nice dinner instead!

Travel in style

2010-03-15T19:11:00.000Z

All I can say is that if you are going by train, this is the way to travel: with champagne and crips (but don't go for the naked version, they just taste like bad fat) and in first class...

And when you have been to Wales and back, you can always treat yourself to a nice dinner at Jamie Oliver's Italian

Snowy days

2010-01-09T11:13:00.001Z

Believe it or not, we have now had snow for four days. And it looks to stay...

We got about 13 cm on Wednesday.

It snowed most of the day but strangely enough it didn't stick. In fact by the end of the day there was 2 cm less snow!

Thursday morning the trains were running again so I had to get up and travel to work. It was a very pretty sunrise which cheered me up.

Friday was my day off. Ventured into town to stock up the fridge. And gloriuos sights to behold all the way to Waitrose.

Saturday morning, the sun is out and everything looks pretty.

Time to get up!

Not the usual commute

2009-12-23T08:14:00.000Z

It is cold. -5 according to my iPhone. A thin layer of snow is covering the ground as is a thin sheet of ice. It is rather pretty.

After thoroughly checking that the trains are running we walk down to the train station.

As we are coming down the hill we spot a lorry across the road. He seems to be trying to reverse into a side road. As we get closer we realise it isn't moving at all. In fact, it is jacked-knifed across the road. Not able to move in any direction.

We walk up to the lorry in hope to be able to sneak past it. We start with the back only to realise that it is about a 2 cm gap between the lorry and the fence. I am not that thin! We find a similar situation at the front of the lorry. Not a chance to sneak past.

As we are trying to get past, the lorry driver climbs out. With an apologetic smile he offers us to climb through the cab of the lorry. Considering that our train is shortly due we take him up on his offer.

So today I climbed through a lorry to get to work...

Train arriving...

SE3

2009-12-22T23:55:00.000Z

Isn't this a familiar morning view for us ex-SE3s?

I must say it felt rather familiar to get to work in the morning. I almost remembered which train coach to get for optimal transfer to the DLR :-)))

Staying in Blackheath was part of my birthday present which due to cash in. So on 15 December hubby brought me and Mos to see Depeche Mode in the O2 arena.

It was a brilliant gig. Lots of good old classics all revamped with a modern beat. Even hubby liked it!

Not only did we get to see Depeche, Soulsavers was the warm up band. Managed to get this impressionistic photo of them.

In darkness we wait...

Christmas trees in a glass box

2009-12-22T23:54:00.000Z

I had some extra time this morning so I spent it photographing my favourite models.

The anchoring wires of the London eye is boxed in by a glass box. Every now and then they change the decorations in the box. At this time of year it is obviously a Christmas theme. A bit more modern I would dare to say.

Xmas shopping

2009-12-13T22:29:00.000Z

I took Friday morning off work to get some Christmas shopping done. Managed to hit the shops shortly before 10 o'clock.

It was brilliant! Very few people about and all the shops were fully stocked and orderly. You could actually find things. Have to go shopping early in day more often.

Anyway, I did stop by Carnaby street and as always they had very funky Christmas decorations.

Muse

2009-11-14T16:56:00.001Z

Clever Is had managed to get hold of four tickets to see Muse at the O2 arena. Very lucky as I utterly failed to get any tickets at all.

It was a fab gig! Brilliant atmosphere and obviously good music.

During the slow parts the mixer table provided us with ample entertainment. Six guys and only one seemed to do any work.

Pod is found

2009-10-23T08:29:00.000+01:00

Some time ago I spotted that the London Eye had lost one of its pod.

Had it fallen down or had someone stolen it?

Yesterday morning I was happy to see it floating in the river.

The eye will be complete again. Hurray!

Glorious morning

2009-10-16T18:49:00.002+01:00

It has really turned dark now in the mornings. When I leave in the morning to get my train it is still dark! In a way it is rather depressing.

However I'm usually quickly cheered up again by the beautiful sunrises I get to see. Some days the mist is majestically sweeping across the fields. Other days the light is fantastically golden. Like yesterday morning.

By the time I reached London the sun had just risen and the colours were just amazing. A fab time to be travelling down the river Thames.

Engagement party

2009-10-02T00:10:00.000+01:00

Our cunning plan has succeeded ;-)
Our bestman and brides maid got engaged a couple of weeks ago! Today we celebrated their engagement with a visit to our old faithful Crooked Surgeon, which isn't so old and faithful anymore as they have changed to into the chain Slug and Lettuce.

As custom has it we had to get them an engagement present. Their engagement took place in Dublin so two engraved Guiness pint glasses were the obvious choice.

The happy couple seemed to think so too..

However, I have a sneaking suspicion that the bride-to-be likes the box the most...

New hat

2009-09-11T19:40:00.001+01:00

Suprise suprise! A present awaited me as I came home tonight.

My talented mother has been at it again. This time she has knitted me a fab hat. Thank you!

Weekend in Sweden

2009-09-02T11:48:00.000+01:00

Just had a fab and long weekend at my parents' place.

One if the highlights was the inauguration of their garden house. Dad had been busy building this fantastic garden house as an extension to the barn. We spent every evening in there!

Their hanging chairs had finally found a place again. I can tell you I've had lots of fun playing in these chairs as a kid. It is a miracle they are still usable!

Dad and my brother enjoying the garden house.

The salad is coming along quit nicely in the beds.

My brother had got mom and dad a very kitch clock in black plastic which is thoroughly inspected here by dad.

On Saturday we had a crayfish party as an inauguration party. Mom had got 8 kilos if crayfish to share between the five of us. Unnecessary to say, we didn't finish it all. So we had crayfish on Sunday too :-).

Friday and Saturday had been shopping days for me. I was on the hunt for curtains and sofa fabrics. In the end I managed to find curtains for three rooms. One for our newly decorated laundry room, one for our office/guest room and one extra pair for our bedroom as our current ones are a bit too light.

On Sunday we managed to sew them all!

For Rob

2009-08-19T19:32:00.000+01:00

Out on our anniversary dinner. Spotted this in the drinks menu. As this is Rob's favourite (the caipirinha that is) I had to photograph it and put it on the blog. Now we are going to enjoy a very nice dinner at Jamie Oliver's Fifteen.

Box room finished!

2009-08-18T18:24:00.001+01:00

For the past weekends we've been busy decorating the box room. We have had fun with stripping paint, filling holes, sanding and painting both the walls and the wood works.

This weekend the paint job was all done. We now had a sunny green/yellow (dulux forest lake 6 & 4) room. So it was time to put up the shelving system.

That took us almost a whole day. We hadn't got the easiest to assemble shelves from ikea. There were four poles that needed to be fixed against the wall and the floor. And to make it extra tricky they had to be in the exact right position in order for the shelves to fit in.

We managed without any major disasters or miscalculations. Yippie! Well, we did get too few fittings so the last shelf and clothes rack have to wait until our ikea delivery next Monday. But we are mighty pleased with our new laundry/storage room (stryk rum)!

Final batch

2009-08-09T11:35:00.000+01:00

It was time to put some more fruits into our rumtopft. We already had a pineapple that we wanted to add. Ian spotted some English plums in the Waitrose so we had to have those as well.

After cutting them up I let the fruit marinate in sugar for one hour. It is increadible. No matter how many times I do this, I always end up having suger all over the kitchen. So massive cleaning action whilst waiting.

It looked to be our last batch and in the last minute I remembered to add the raisins. They were lovely last year so we had to have them now as well.

When adding the fruits I quickly realised that there was far less space left then I thought. Oooops, ended up with far to much fruit and the pot filled to the brim. Guess we have to have some for dessert tonight.

Now the rumtopft will just sit there until Christmas. Yum!

Back in business

2009-08-04T22:01:00.000+01:00

I had a bit of a accident which is the reason for no postings in a while. My iPhone was very naugthy and decided to commit suicide by jumping out of my pocket and straight down onto a marble floor. CPR was fruitless so I had to surrender to a life without iPhone.

I must admit it was hard. We had become quite close. So in the end I decided to treat myself to a new one. Sunday was the big day when I went to the shop and picked out my new friend. And we have been happy ever since ;-)

I was particular pleased to find out that I could download all my apps without having to pay for them again. Good thinking Apple...

So now I'm back in the 'being mobile' business. And so is our Rumtopft...

Well, a new batch of the rumtopft is under preparation! This year we have actually started it on time; that is in June. We started with the must have strawberries. Followed by our homegrown wild strawberries (smultron). Last night we added blackberries (björnbär), blueberries (blåbär) and apricots.

There is still some space left before the pot is filled to the brim. Then it has to happily sit and brew until Christmas. I must say it looks (and smells) really nice. I must admit we have splashed out a bit on a 5 year old rum so it should become really yummy. Laurie and Linda, we will save some extra for you ;-)

Doesn't it look lovely?

Glad midsommar!

2009-06-19T19:58:00.006+01:00

It is midsummer eve and we are in the car on our way to a music festival in Croyde, Devon. A nice four hour drive through very pretty country-side. The best part is that even though it is nearly eight o'clock, the sun is high in the sky.

Very appropriately for the day we just drove past Stonehenge. It is a bit of a pity to see such a remarkable place be completely deserted on a midsummer eve. Well well, I guess that's the way it is here. At least I got a sneaky shot of if through the window as we drove past.

And of the gigantic pig fram across the road. It was definately not there last time we were here. Time to enjoy the magnificent views a bit more.

The J&L story in photos

2009-06-02T22:50:00.005+01:00

It started rather innocently on a Tuesday evening...

... attack ...

... All was calm again...

Purple cow

2009-05-28T08:15:00.001+01:00

Spotted this on my way to work this morning. Someone has built a construction in the form of an upside-down cow! And it's puple and called Underbelly! Very bizarre. Nearly got me to miss my boat as it kind of demanded to get photographed.

Sailing weekend in Solent

2009-05-26T20:31:00.004+01:00

As a birthday surprise Ian took me out for a sailing weekend. He had arranged for us to hook up with Geert (ex-colleague to Ian) who just happens to be about to start his own skipper business. As Geert haven't got his own boat just yet he had rented a nice 12 meter racing yacht called Blue Juice. The rest of the crew was made up by Geert's wife Jane, Jelte, Lorin, Alex and Shaun.

I was completely unaware of Ian's plans and was told first on Friday at 15:30 that I was to go on my first proper sailing trip ever. All very exciting and very unexpected! There I had been packing my passport and the hiking shoes. Was I disappointed you may ask. Not at all! The whole experience turned out to be very pleasant indeed. So good I could easily be tempted to go again. (As long as I can go with Geert and First reef.)

Our first outing was to take us from Southampton and up the river Beaulieu to find us a nice spot to moor for the night. It all took us a little bit longer then planned (mainly due to shopping) so we missed our pub dinner. Oops!

Luckily we had food for cooking, thanks to the shopping team. This was when we realised a few things were as they were supposed to be. Trivial things like a working fridge, temperamental gas stove (kept switching itself off), lack of sauce pans and other vital kitchen supplies. Makes cooking so much more interesting. Well, well, Alex and Jane managed to cook us a feast anyway, in batches! But it did mean we were gunning for the pubs for the rest of the weekend.

Both Saturday and Sunday turned out to be beautiful days. Sunny and blue sky! Water lapping! All very chilled and relax. Plenty of opportunities for water photographing. I was definitely liking it. The guys were however mumbling a bit that there wasn't an awful lot of wind. Good enough for me though.

As Geert is planning to teach sailing in his new business adventure he rather quickly got me involved with the whole steering business. Properly called being at the helm I think.

First time around was under motor so it wasn't that hard. Just needed to calm down and accept that your turning will happen 5 minutes after you turned the wheel.

Second time around was under sail. At this point I was still a bit confused as to what was going on so I spent most of the time photographing the water instead. But you can only do that for so long so Geert spotted me idle after awhile.
I had just got the whole groove thing explained when it was time for tacking. Oh my God! I could barely see the difference my steering did to the sails.Anyway I did a very nice and controlled tack (according to the experts), straight back into the groove again.

I was happy cruising along starting to get a tiny bit of feel for it. Geert was debating if now was a good time for man-over-board drill when our navigator of the day came up on deck. Very calmly he said that now wasn't a good time as we are about to run into a sandbank and we should tack instead. Me struggling with the terminology managed the first part "ready?" and failed to remember the second part. All that sprang to mind was "lederhosen", don't ask me why. Anyway, managed another controlled tack and just as we came out of it the backend hit the sandbank and all of a sudden we were very still.

Not to worry, we managed to get off the bank in just a few minutes. However, I thought that probably was about as much damage I was willing
to inflict on the others. I stayed well clear of the "making the boat go forward" business and reported for kitchen duty instead.

In the end we managed to sail to Lymington for our second night. Third night was spent in Cowes on Isle of Wight. And in between we saw the Needles, some very big container ships and a huge cruise ship. I managed to take loads of photographs, I'll know what I'll be doing this week. On our last day we sailed to Portsmouth. We had some lunch and spent some time seriously tacking our way out of the harbour.

A day at Tate Modern

2009-05-01T14:40:00.001+01:00

I'm now sitting on the Tate Modern's roof terrace enjoying the sun. I've spent the morning exploring the exhibitions here. I started off with the Rodchenko & Popova exhibition. It was fairly interesting but I must say I preferred the earlier works. In particular I liked Rodchenko's explorations of the line. Spotted two paintings that I think my brother would like.

Their paintings' geometric patterns seemed to lend themself to weaving. Need to show them to Mom. I've got some ideas for curtains to the lounge. Diagonal lines with a floating grid ontop... I better start drawing before I forget the idea.

Next I went to see the Roni Horn exhibition. To be honest I knew nothing about her and her paintings didn't do much for me. However her photos did. She had some fantastic photos of water and a few very dreamy photos of the sea melting into a misty sky. They were superb. Need to go to the sea now for a new photo project.

So feeling all inspired I decided to continue with the permanent exhibitions. I now have even more ideas. I want to continue with creating mobiles and I want to make one hanging down the stairs. Perhaps lend some ideas from Rodchenko's constructions in plywood or use more of what you can find in the nature. Perhaps spray paint some interesting leaves and feathers mixed with driftwood. Hmm need to develop that idea a bit more.

Resting time is now up. One more floor to explore before a little bit of shopping. At least I've got my ideas written down. I'll keep you posted on any further developments.

Jelte BBQing

2009-04-13T16:03:00.001+01:00

We're at Jelte and Linda for an Easter BBQ. We are very lucky with the weather. The sun is actually shining after four days of rain.

However, Jelte's BBQ technique might just need to be a tiny bit improved... Or is it just down to the raw material... 85% vs 96% beef burgers...

Little horses

2009-04-07T18:45:00.001+01:00

On Sunday L and I continued our healthy weekend with a walk to Eashing. Didn't find to much on the way capturing our photographic senses so we ended up mostly chatting and enjoying being out in the fresh air. As always you get hungry after a while so a lunch stop at the Stag was called for.

When we asked for the menu we were told that the waiting time would be 1 1/2 hour. No time to lose, we quickly got our orders in and the waiting time had miracules dropped to 1h 10 min. We called R&I to tell them it was time to finish painting their banisters and come and join us instead.

To our surprise after having waited for 25 minutes our food arrived. It was all very jummy so we were all very happy. Just as we were about to finish R&I showed up. A quick drink and we were off again.

As always when you are out and about the countryside you have to walk through some animal fields. This time we walked through a horse field. Three little horses were waiting for us close to the exit stile. All very curiuos and determined not to let us out until we had said hello. We were all racing to reach the stile first. We won but not until the horses managed to get a sneak cuddle first.

Safely on the other side we felt more at home to give them more cuddles. And it proved a good time for some close-up shots of pretty horses.

Gigantic cake

2009-04-05T02:05:00.000+01:00

Today L and I have been out wandering the Surrey paths. It was blue sky, warm and generally very pleasant so a nice walk with the cameras sounded like a brilliant idea.

We headed out around one o'clock (hey it is Saturday and you don't have to get up early then). The target was to get to Watts tea house.

So we happily wandered along. Took lots of photos. Met some scary looking, but very sweet, highland cows. Took a couple of wrong turns and finally found the tea house.

Lyckily it was open, at this time we were getting rather hungry. Being a tea house we obviously had to get a cream tea (tea, scones, cream and jam) and a chocolate cake. The cake arrived immediately and both L and I got a big shock.

The size of the cake; it was enormous! It was enough to feed a whole family. It was in fact a quarter of the whole cake. And we got one piece each.

Every customer who came in commented on our cakes' size. Even the other waitresses did too. We became the big talking point.

After getting over the initial shock we started to photograph them. We needed proof. No one would believe us otherwise.

We had our cream tea and a little bit of the cake. But in the end we had to admit defeat. We just couldn't take it anymore. We both had a massive sugar rush and walked back home in high speed. Both craving for some salt to neutralise our taste buds.

I think we need to go for another walk tomorrow to get rid of all the calories and sugar.

G20 musings

2009-03-31T17:02:00.000+01:00

So it has been an interesting day. Media has been trying to hype up the protests. Security has been extensive in CW. Walking through the shopping mall it felt like a weekend. The sun was shining and most people had dressed down. And all in all I've only seen one tired protestor catching a train home.

However it's been amusing to watch the dressed down "bankers". The train to work wasn't its usual black suits rubbing shoulders experience. Again a slightly weekend feel with a bit less people on the train. I can't complain.

Anyway it remains to be seen if the 5000 protestors will descend upon CW tomorrow or not. Here's a photo of what it looked like today, no suits in sight...

Apparently it was 10 years ago Symbian set up the Ronneby office so the Swedish ex-pats met up after work for a drink at our trusted Stage door. A nice evening with plenty of catching up on gossip.

Afternoon in Exeter

2009-03-28T18:13:00.001Z

On the road back from Exeter. I'm stuck in the back seat as Rob has stolen my front seat. Don't really mind to be honest. Means I can sit here in the back playing with my iPhone.

We have all been to a family get-together in Exeter. Ian, Rob, Ruth, Piers and I all piled in to the cars this morning to meet up with Jane, James and the extended Hutton family for lunch. Ian's uncle Neil and aunt Rowe was there. It was good to see them again. Haven't seen them since Jane and James's wedding. Ian's cousins were also there with their kids. It was very nice to finally meet them.

Rowe, who organised the event, had picked a very nice restaurant for us to meet. Luckily we had a whole room to ourselves. Specially since it were 19 of us. After a few hours of splendid company and good food it was time for us to head home. We now have a four hour drive to get back home (and my battery is nearly dead!).

Exeter seems like a really nice place, the little I saw of it. I definately like to explore it some more. Perhaps next time. In the meantime, here are some photos I took.

Queen of the desert

2009-03-26T23:42:00.000Z

On my way back home after a fab time at the theatre. Via my wonderful colleague I had managed to bag four tickets to see Priscilla the queen of the desert. I convinced hubby, R&I to tag along. And yes, I did not mentioned at the time that Jason Donovan was starring nor that it was a musical. In the weeks leading up to tonight the boys were giving me lots of grief and tried to get out of the whole deal. But no luck there.

Luckily the show was brilliant. A real feel good show with lots of laughter. Everybody enjoyed it and their faith in me is restored! I think I'm allowed to make more theatre bookings :-)

It's all happening

2009-03-25T08:05:00.001Z

Oops, it's been some time since my last blog. Sorry about that. A few things have happened since last. First of all, my project has been completed and is now adorning our kitchen window. The chillies look really amazing when they catch the sun. They almost become translucent and you can see the seeds inside. Obviously I had to photograph it.

Secondly, the spring has arrived! For two weeks now the weather has been lovely. Sunny, warm and generally pleasant. This means that our garden has come alive. It's all very exciting to see which plants will come up etc. Specially since this is our first spring/summer in the house.

I've been particulary keen to see how the bulbs I planted will do. And yes! a few weeks ago I saw the first purple crocuses appearing :-) Unfortunately the wind/frost got some of them pretty quickly, but not before I got a chance to photograph them.

Next in line where the daffodils. They been cheering us up for the past two weeks and are still going. The tulips is in the process of coming up and soon the flower bed will have some purple in it again.

The weekend saw a proper spring clean of the garden. Ian had fun laying grass turf and plant a hanging basket whilst I was tearing down the naugthy climbing plant (not ivy but it behaves like it) and ensuring all the weed and snails are non-existent. All very satisfying work. The garden looks so much nicer now.

That's it for me, soon time to get off the train. More photos of the garden will follow as it progresss...

New toy

2009-03-04T22:38:00.000Z

Been playing with my iPhone again. Downloaded another sweet little software for photo editing. This one, called coloursplash, turns your photos black & White and then let's you use your finger as a brush to bring back one colour. Very cool and fun to play with.

Kitchen project

2009-03-03T19:28:00.000Z

For the past weeks I been working on a mobile to hang in our kitchen window. As I came to the conclusion that a curtain would block out too much light and (yes Mom you are slowly converting me) the window seemed a little bare, I thought a mobile could do the job. I guess I got a bit inspired from the mobile shop we found in Japan.

The question was what should I hang in it. As it is a kitchen dried chillies and limes seemed to be the obvious choice. So I've spent a week or two drying them.

Next question was what should I use as a hanging base? I was pondering on this whilst the chillies were drying. The only thing I could come up with, which didn't involve a complicated shopping trip, was gigantic tooth picks. Not ideal perhaps but should do the job.

The week turns into weekend and my in-laws came for a visit. On the Sunday we all went out for a nice walk when it suddently hit me; I can use fallen down tree sticks and branches.

So I came back with an assorted collection of branches and sticks. Next was just to assemble it all. It was a bit fiddely but then again, that's the kind of job I like. Last night I strung the last bit together and voilà, we got a mobile for the kitchen. You can see the result below.

All that is needed now is some heavy duty drilling to put the hook up in the window. I might leave that to Hubby, he enjoys that kind of job more than I :-)

Culture in Cardiff

2009-03-02T19:53:00.003Z

The Plants invited us to join them for their annual cultural weekend in Cardiff, Wales. Having attended it last year it was an easy choice to tag along. In splendid Plants fashion the weekend was spent with much laughter, sillyness and good wine & food.

We had left the logistics to Rob which ended up with us taking the train. Believe it or not but he was so organised that we travelled back in first class. Obviously we had to keep up the appearance and when the white wine ran out we naturally had to continue with the champagne. Credit crunch, what do you mean? ;-)

The actual "excuse"g for the gathering was to go to
the opera. This year the Welsh opera house was giving a brilliant production of Mozart's the Marriage of Figaro. We all thoroughly enjoyed it. Not sure it had anything to do with the Mojitos and Caipirinhas we had before though...

Sunday was saint David's day so the Welsh were all out. Leeks, daffodils and red dragons where ever you turned. Some off us piled onto the tourist boat and went for a turn around Cardiff bay. Ian spent most of the time chatting up old ladies while Laurie and Andrea enjoyed the diesel fume at the back of the boat.

After some milling around the Docks, trying to get a coffee, it was time to leave Cardiff. Once back home we went to R&I to have pizza and to admire their blue-ray player. Unfortunately the only film they had to demonstrate with was National treasure II. When R started to rewind because he missed a scene we couldn't stand the badness anymore and went home.

More photos can be found on my flickr...

Strange man

2009-02-28T17:21:00.001Z

Currently in Cardiff where we ran in to this very strange man. He has promised to take us to the opera. Not sure we can trust him.

-- Post From My iPhone

Saturday walk

2009-02-16T18:53:00.000Z

On Valentine's day I had the luxury of being served breakfast in bed! You can't really complain :-)

We had nothing planned which is rather rare for us. So we got up and realized we could do whatever we wanted! Being such a sunny day the obvious choice was to go for a walk.

So we went down to river Wey and walked all the way to Guildford. Once in Guildford we found a cool pub, the star, which has a stage for local bands to play. Better check that out more properly.

After some shopping we took the train home and I got cooked for again.

A very pleasant Valentine's indeed :-)

Reflections

2009-02-11T09:20:00.001Z

Just saw these fantastic sun reflections on a building close to London bridge. Click on the photo to see a bigger version that shows the rainbow coloured reflections.

Time to get to work..

-- Post From My iPhone

Girls' musings

2009-02-06T23:47:00.000Z

On my way home from a splendid night out with the girls. We had an evening with the perfect mix of gossip, girls' talk and techie nerd talk. For the first, and probably the last time, we all had the same type of mobile. And shared similar views on it. I'm glad I'm not the only one wanting to throw my phone out the window from time to time. But in the end we all agreed it is a very good phone with lots of potential for future developments. And I've also got some new apps to try out now. Ooops need to get off the train now.

-- Post From My iPhone

Okonomiyaki and sake

2009-02-06T17:51:00.001Z

On Saturday we were being tourists in London. We went to the British museum to see the Babylon exhibition. Completely forgetting that you can't be spontaneuos in London, the exhibition was obviously full and we couldn't get in. Instead we wandered round the museum's top floor and looked at stuff from all over the world. Quite interesting stuff.

Afterwards walking down the appropriately named Museum street we happened upon the only European Okonomiyaki restaurant, Abeno! We were rather pleased with this and obviously had to try it. The okonomoyaki was seriously nice. Only very slightly westernized, but in a positive way. The flavour was a bit more subtle and they had added cheese which is never wrong.

All in all a very nice day out.
And the evening we spent partying until early morning. But that is another blog posting.

-- Post From My iPhone

Another snowed-in day

2009-02-03T18:42:00.002Z

Woke up to this beautiful view this morning. The sky was blue, the sun was shining and the clouds were hiding on the horizon. A bit dangerous outside though since the streets had turned into ice. This meant that the trains were all cancelled this morning so all I had to do was to go downstairs to start working. Not bad I must admit. I could certainly get use to work from home a day a week. I will continue to dream on...

By the end of the day our 23 cm of snow had diminished to be only 13 cm. I guess this means I'll have to get back to commuting to work again.

We have snow!!!

2009-02-02T09:03:00.001Z

Woke up this morning to this glorious view! And it was still snowing.

Being England everything is obviously chaotic. Trains aren't running (or severly delayed). News call it severe weather with arctic temperatures. They are warning it will go down to a wapping -2 degrees :-o. All I can do is laugh. Anyway, at least it means I can work from home.

-- Post From My iPhone

Playing with photos

2009-01-29T23:22:00.004Z

Here is a photo from yesterday morning. I'm waiting for the boat by London eye. It was raining and generally miserably which made a rather grey photo. I thought I better make it a bit more funky and had a play in Photogene on my way home. I'm liking photogene more and more!

Time to see if my new blogging app will work.

-- Post From My iPhone

Commuting got a lot more fun

2009-01-28T18:41:00.002Z

So I've been playing some more with my iPhone and downloaded some apps. Found this fun camera app (quadcamera) that takes four or more photos in a short sequence and stitch them together. Not sure what to use it for, but it is fun. Next I downloaded photogene which is a photo editing app. You can play with the levels, crop, add borders etc. So far I'm pleased with it.

The above photo is the result of my demonstration for Hubby (doesn't he look nice?) during our train journey home yesterday. Commuting all of a sudden became a lot more fun!

Next I need to find a better blogging tool. It's painful not being able to copy text or undo. I've already have had to write this entry three times since I've accidentally deleted the picture. Oooops!

I'm very happy to see I have a new reader from Sweden, Tinkerbell! Thank you very much for your comment. Hope to see you soon again!

Great granddads house

2009-01-25T14:26:00.002Z

And here is a photo of the house Dad's granddad built. My Dad lived
here in the groundfloor flat between 1948 and 1956.

Winter in Sweden

2009-01-25T13:36:00.006Z

Back home again after spending a week in Holmsund with my Dad. Luckily the snow arrived about three days before me, so I'm happy I've got the chance to see proper snow this year!

The temperature was -16 C when I arrived to Umeå. Nice and cold! When I left it was only 0 C. The snow was slowly turning into slush... :-(

Dad showed me around Holmsund which is his birth place. I've now seen all the houses he ever lived in, including the one my great Granddad built (the building goes in the family). We also got the opportunities to meet some of Dad's cousins. It was good to see Maine and Hans again. We used to spend our summers together in Sövall, Grebbestad, Bohuslän. I think I was about 15 last time I saw them.

On Wednesday Dad and I went for a walk along the coast outside Holmsund. The wind was ice-cold and it probably took 30 min before I could feel my cheeks again.

Anyway, when walking along the waterfront we discovered the most amazing ice formations on the water. The ice along this particular stretch was a bit broken up since the ice breakers and pilot ships use this stretch to reach the harbour. But just along the shoreline the ice had been folded, just like if it was a sheet of fabric. Neither Dad nor I have ever seen anything like that before. Of course I had to borrow Dad's camera and take lots of photographs.

Comedy cooking with friends

2009-01-13T00:06:00.013Z

Back home again after a fab time in Japan we thought we share our experiences with our friends. So on Saturday we invited Rob & Is for a Japanese dinner. The plan was to cook okonomiyaki and drink our specially imported sake. Okonomiyaki was one of the many Japanese
dishes we tried in Japan and is best described as a pancake with cabbage, meat or fish.

After some googling I came up with two recipes. We decided to go for Hiroshima-style which means that noodles are added to the mix. After spending some time working out what needed to be done I called the gang into the kitchen and started the delegation.

Ian became in charge of frying noodles (and yes some of them did catch fire...), Is was sorting out the gyoza and Rob and I were frying two cabbage pancakes with thinly sliced pork on top.

Here starts the comedy: once the pancakes had fried on one side for awhile we had to flip it over! In true team spirit two of us equipped with a total of three spatulas managed to flip both of them over without incident. Stage one completed! Next we transferred the pancake and pork (which at this stage is at the bottom) on top of the fried noodles. First one was a bit tricky and needed a little bit of rescuing. By the second, we had got the hang of it.

Third step involved a fried egg which the noodles and pancake were placed on top of. So far so good!

Now all we needed to do was to flip the whole thing over onto a plate. Ian was a hero and flipped them both without either dropping them on the floor or burning his fingers.

By just adding some Worcester sauce and mayo our two okonomiyakis were ready to be served! And delicious they were!

Good work team! The sake was well deserved after these difficult maneuvers...!

Sunday we closed the kitchen and went to Putney to see Jelte and Linda's new flat and have a pub lunch. Which due to Jelte's brilliant planning ended up to be dinner instead. The table hadn't been booked until 18:00... Oooops!

Up a mountain and down again

2008-12-20T13:11:00.012Z

We have had a couple of days now without access to Internet. We have been up Koya-san, a very nice mountain filled with temples and monasteries. After two days we came down again and have now spent two days exploring Kyoto. I'm a bit too tired to write a long posting, so here are some nice photos I've taken in the last couple of days instead.

Tori gate in Miyajima

Christmas tree in Kyoto train station

Ian and Teruko, our fabulous guide in Koya-san

Two dragons in a Zen garden in Koya-san

Temple in Kyoto

We're back in our hostel bar!

2008-12-16T13:40:00.003Z

Got up early this morning to take the 2h train to Hiroshima. I slept most of the way...

We went straight to the peace memorial park and the museum. It was a rather tough morning. Very sad to see the effects of the atom bomb. Had a nice chat with a Japanese man and his two kids though. They wanted to know where I came from and why I was there. We chatted for a good 15 minutes. When he lost his words, he found them using his mobile phone. That is technology for you.

Feeling very down towards lunch-time we decided to cheer us up by going to Miyajima, a pretty little island in Hiroshima bay. Watched the sunset there and headed back to Kyoto. We are now starting to get very good in using the train system and local transport :-)

Tomorrow we are off to Koya-san, a monastery up in the mountains. I picked the ryokan without internet connection, but it has an onsen (hot spring spa), so probably no postings until we are back in Kyoto on Friday.

Until then...

TV star!!!

2008-12-15T13:04:00.023Z

Well, that is me!!! Before going to Obuse on Saturday we got up at 04:30! to see the fish market. It was the penultimate morning it was open to tourists. Must say, it wasn't very tourist-friendly and I can totally understand that they want to close it for one of their busiest months.

After wandering around in utter confusion for half-an-hour we finally found where the tuna auctions were held. The tourists were ushered into one corner to view the spectacle with several TV-crews filming them. One of them decided to interview me! Gosh! What could I say, it was 5:30 in the morning and I was barely awake enough to make sure I didn't get run over by any of the trucks, bicycles or men with big carts. Yet alone I had to attempt to sound vaguely intelligent. Ian happily photographed...

Once we safely got out of the fish market we had a well deserved breakfast and then headed off to the train station to get the bullet train to Nagano.

We are now coming out to the country-side and all of a sudden realise that there are no longer any signage in English. Ooops! Well, we did find our local train to Obuse and after very carefully listening heard them announce Obuse just in time to get off the train.

After checking in we went back to take the train to Yudanaka continued on a local bus and got off somewhere out of town. And after a half-an-hour walk we finally reached our destination, the onsen (hot water spa) for the snow monkeys!

There were unbelievable many monkeys around the onsen and all very photo-friendly. Obviously we got lots of photos. They just were so adorable. And they really do go swimming in the onsen.

Back to Obuse we had a fab dinner at the local Sake-brewery. And yes, we bought plenty of sake with us after some proper tasting. Unfortunately the best one needs to be kept in a fridge. I think we might struggle a bit with that one. Might have to drink it before we go home, what a shame...:-)

Spent an extra day chilling in Obuse. Tried the Japanese take on Italian cuisine. Brilliant! Had a fantastic pasta bolognaise with beef and miso sauce.

This leads us to today which we have spent travelling. Trough Nagano and Tokyo we have now reached Kyoto. Found a nice backpacker's hostel. Being a bit posh we did choose the en-suite room rather than the dorm room. Best thing about the hostel is that it has wireless internet and we are now sitting in the bar, drinking beer and writing these posts.

Tomorrow we are making a day-trip to Hiroshima. Can't decide whether I'm looking forward to it or not. It will be so sad to go and see the peace memorial. I'm nearly crying just reading about it. Well, well, I'm pretty well stocked up on tissues.

Sightseeing!!!

2008-12-12T12:36:00.008Z

Hurray! I'm finally out doing sightseeing. Yesterday I spent the day in Ginza, the shopping heartland of Tokyo. Very posh shops, so I had to stick to window shopping. All to Ian's delight. (He did get a bit worried when he heard I went to Ginza.)

Got lots of photos as each shop has remarkable architecture or window display. Or both.

In the evening I meet up with Ian and his colleague Alberto for drinks in The Bar. Well, that is the name of the place. And it was on the 45th floor. Great views as expected. On our way down we experienced a slice of Japanese life. Two older gentlemen out with their daughters!? Wouldn't think so. But they sure could have been. They were very happy and chatty. One of the men quite pleased he could show off his English, all to the girls delight...:-)

After drinks we went for some Japanese pizza. Very strange! Think buckwheat pancake with grated potatoes, leek and carrots and mix in octopus and shrimps. On top of that a thick sweet teriyaki like sauce and a raw egg. Very filling indeed. I could only eat half...

Today was Ian's first proper holiday. Yippie! Celebrated by going to Harajuku. There we started off by browsing the trendy (and strange) shops, followed by the very nice designer shops. Got ourselves two nice hats.

After lunch we went to the pretty shinto shrine Meiji-jingu. And ended up in Shinjuku where we had dinner.

Tonight's dinner took place in a tiny basement. And it had an English menu!!!! (When they don't have English menus, you can usually resort to the plastic mock-ups in the window.) Tonight we had some nice barbecued meat.

Tomorrow we are leaving Tokyo to go to Obuse, where we hopefully be able to see the snow monkeys.

Getting better

2008-12-10T14:06:00.005Z

Yippie, I'm getting better! Felt rather miserable this morning so decided to stay in bed. Woke up again at 12 o'clock, just in time for the housekeeper to come and fill up the tissue boxes. The poor guy was so apologetic for coming in whilst I was there, even though I had put the green sign on the door. Anyway, the tissue box got stocked up :-)

Had some breakfast. Ian had bought me some bready thing from the Family mart in the basement. Interestingly the top half had butter spread in a thin layer and the bottom half had about 1/2 cm thick ribbon of butter. Luckily, it was easily removable.

So the day was more or less spent in the hotel room. More Japanese tv with bad American movies. Read half my book The children of Hurin by JRR Tolkien. I hope I will be able to find a book shop selling English books since that is the only book I brought...

Another amusement I had was to take photographs from our window. As our room is on the 32nd floor, we have pretty good views. And at one point the sun rays was very visible.

Feeling rather desperate this morning, I asked Ian to get me some cough medicines. After some looking he found a pharmacist. Obviously they didn't speak English so he had to mime what he was after. So now I've got a jar of some pills. I find it a bit suspicious that cough medicines come in tablet form. I think I will save them until I get really desperate. Until then, I'll just stick to my honey and coca cola.

I know, coca cola isn't the best of things. But it certainly helps sooth a tortured throat.

Anyway, as I said in the beginning, I'm now feeling better. So good that I went out with Ian for some dinner. Found a nice Thai place and had some lovely chicken with cashew nuts and beef with oyster sauce.

Time to try and get some sleep again. Hopefully I'll be feeling good enough for some sightseeing tomorrow!!!

First days in Tokyo

2008-12-09T10:57:00.012Z

So we made it to Tokyo. Three hours later then scheduled. Which in a way was good, fewer hours to try to stay awake. The jet lag is definitely noticeable. By some strange will power we forced our selves to go out for dinner. Found a nice Japanese izakaya (bar/dining) on the 46th floor of the Caretta Shiodome. Fabulous views over Tokyo bay and its pretty rainbow bridge. Yes, it is lit in all the rainbow's colours.

Next day Ian had the morning off. So we took the boat up to Asakusa, the old part of Tokyo. Ian had to go in to work so I explored Asakusa on my own. The area is most famous for its old temple Senso-ji and gigantic lanterns. The area is popular with tourist so lots of souvenir shops could be found.

As always ordering food in a language you don't understand is always fun. You never really know what you are going to get. Luckily lots of restaurant have either pictures of the food or plastic versions... I played it safe for lunch and stopped at a self-service cafe. I was a bit impressed that most of the stuff there had a sampling tray next to it, so you try it before you bought it.

Waiting for Ian I wandered around the shopping area around our hotel. It is a rather interesting concept. You don't really find anything at street level here. You walk one level up on gangways, and the shopping is one level down. There are lots of tunnels opening up to big open-air piazzas surrounded by the skyscrapers.

Surprisingly enough they all have lots of Christmas decoration. Masses of Christmas lights can be seen everywhere and in the most fantastic constellations.

I even found a little stall selling pictures with pressed flowers and saying God Jul next to a Danish flag. The stall was called Ayakos Blomster (another Swedish word).

We, (Ian had by now caught up on me) also stumbled upon a interesting artist. He was wearing a DJ mixer table around his neck, dancing to some funky music and painting at the same time. It is hard to describe, but most enjoyable to watch. The guy was using brush, charcoal and spray cans. I was most impressed with him drawing a man in three seconds.

All in all it was a very nice day with lots of exploring. Unfortunately towards the end of the day I felt a nasty cold coming on :-(

Today I felt even worst. Hardly slept at all during the night. Kept waking myself and Ian up by coughing. So, nothing much to do but to stay in bed. Managed to get some sleep and have had fun watching Japanese TV. The commercials are hilarious. Feeling much better now. Hoping for a full nights sleep and some exploring tomorrow. Keep you posted!

Weekend in Sweden

2008-12-02T15:25:00.006Z

Ian and I spent the weekend in Sweden celebrating Mom's 65th birthday. On Saturday we had a very nice birthday party with lots and lots of cakes. (Mom have been very busy over the past weeks!) My aunt and my cousin Anna-Karin (with family) also came to the party which was very nice since I don't get to meet them very often. Obviously Per and Siri was there too as was Per's new girlfriend Carin.

I can't believe how tall Siri is now. And she is definitely coming to that age when I can take her out for a proper shopping spree, can't wait!!!

We finally got to meet Mom and Dad's new dog Sissi too. She was such an adorable dog, I almost brought her back with me. She is a Danish-Swedish farm dog and about 9 months old. She definitely fell for Ian, constantly begging for his attention or curling up in his lap.

She was also very fond of jumping up and down, sniffing through your hair, licking or sticking her nose in your ear. What can I say, completely adorable!

Time to get to work...Only two and a half days to go before HOLIDAY!!!!

First snow

2008-10-29T21:25:00.007Z

Can you believe it, we have had our first snow! Not very much, but at least it covered all the roofs (the ground was as bar as ever though).

I still haven't managed to post my photos from my mobile. So for this photo I had to download it to my PC before I could post it...hmmmm...

Mobile phone blogging

2008-10-27T22:26:00.000Z

I've inherited Ian's old phone and managed to hook it up to the WLAN @ home. I'm proud of myself as I did it all on my own : )

The phone has a camera, which is it's main advantage. Unfortunately the upload photo on blogger seems to have gone missing...Oooops. Better try another time.

Finally Friday

2008-10-24T20:19:00.003+01:00

The start of the weekend! Nothing better... :-)

Have just found a home for our gift from Jelte's Mom Inga. We meet up on Tuesday and she had brought a very nice house warming present from the Netherlands. It's new home is now in our purple bathroom next to Linda's gift. Wondering what the present was? Well, it was "Under a fig tree" scented sticks. The sticks are placed in a glass bottle and every 4-5 day you turn the sticks over...It smells very nice in our bathroom now :-) Thank you very much Inga!!!

So on Tuesday we took Inga, Jelte and Linda to the theatre to see Rain man. With Josh Hartnett, who was unexpectedly good being a Hollywood star and all, and Adam Godley who was superb. He had an incredible body language portraying an autistic man. Definitely recommendable!

Tomorrow we are going to see little Isabelle. It will be fun to see how much she has grown. Apparently she is smiling now. I'll bet you Ian will get her to smile within 5 minutes.

Well, it is time to go downstairs to cook some dinner. Wonder what we have in store for tonight....

Rob at his best!

2008-10-20T20:11:00.005+01:00

The weekend was spent with our lovely friends Rob and Is. They invited us over for dinner on Saturday night. Ian and I stumbled home after savoring some fantastic chicken cakes with coriander and lime sauce, followed by pork belly with mango chutney and finished with a "simple" trifle. And it goes with out saying, lots of red wine...

Sunday morning, they enthusiastically picked us up for a country-side walk with Is' friends Rachel and Abigail. Luckily they were as hung-over as the rest of us...! Four miles later (or so) and only half-way through the walk, we ended up in the Drummonds Arms hotel & pub for a proper Sunday lunch. We had a very vague intention to continue the walk after lunch. But when you have a full blown Sunday pub lunch, it is just not possible...

Once home I decided to attempt making a flower arrangement. Never really done any like this before so I'm rather pleased with it, even though it is a bit wonky.

Shopping weekend

2008-10-05T22:29:00.004+01:00

So, the weekend is nearly over now. It always goes so quickly.

It has been a shopping and sorting-things-out-at-home weekend. IKEA trip on Friday where we got lots of stuff for the bathroom and some other bits and bobs. That was hard shopping for poor Ian. We didn't get home until midnight! But we did get Swedish meatballs for dinner :-)

Saturday, food shopping and rearranging the kitchen a little bit. The wine rack was in the way so needed to find a new home for it. Cooked a fab dinner, duck legs with sweet potato mash...yum...

Shopping continued today with a trip to Guildford. I was looking for boxes to fit into our new bathroom shelf, but couldn't find any that fitted. I did find a very nice basket for our fire wood instead and lovely bed linen by Orla Kiely.

While I was out shopping, Ian spent the day drilling holes. All the shelves etc are now up in the bathroom. He's done a fantastic job, it looks really good now. You can see some photos on my flickr.

Today's photos are of our bedroom lamp. The lamp consist of a metal garland that you wrap around the light bulb. You can then shape it in anyway you want. Tonight I've added a second garland to make it bigger. It creates really cool shadows in the room as you see...

Time to get ready for bed.

Hello!

2008-10-04T12:03:00.006+01:00

So it is about time for me to start blogging properly, and stop testing it for work ;-)

My intention for this blog is to keep better in contact with my family and friends. I know I'm rubbish in calling you, sorry. Hopefully I'll be able to post my musings, photos and other things that has happened to me, when I'm commuting to work (can't read books or sleep all the time...). All that is required is a slightly better phone which I've put Ian on the case to sort out (Love you sweetheart)!.

So I have spent my whole Saturday morning setting up this blog. I guess I should admit that majority of the time was spent on creating the photo banner. Isn't it nice???

Isn't it a nice hat I got last Christmas? I found this photo when I was hunting for a photo for my profile. In the end I choose one of me taken at Dan & Jon's 80ies party.

It is now past midday, so I better get up. It is my turn to go to the bakery this morning. Will pop into our lovely butcher on the way too. Just need to decide what we should have for dinner tonight. Currently thinking duck breasts...