Tag: Sweden

As we drove through Sweden, we immediately fell in love with the forests and lakes – like Norway, it is a wild camping paradise. At our first lunch stop, we plunged from a dock into a sun-warmed lake, enjoying a peaceful end to the summer. We also camped at beautiful Lake Fegen, a site we bookmarked from a photo by Frenchy Le Van when we were only dreaming of visiting Scandinavia. During a few days of rainy weather, we visited Ikea to pick up some cosy new furnishing for the motorhome (during our travels we had read about hygge) and ate some Swedish meatballs and veggie meatballs with delicious lingonberry jam and gravy. As we mentioned in our last blog, Amelia had also been looking forward to eating Swedish banana pizza. We found a highly-rated pizza takeaway and ordered a banana pizza (it also had chicken, peanuts, and curry powder) and a kabab pizza (cooked and then topped with a pile of french fries). The banana pizza was surprisingly good – though Amelia gave it 3 out 10 stars because it “tasted like bananas”. She loved the “french fry pizza” and rated it 10 out of 10! Amelia’s highlight however was Sweden’s unbelievable playgrounds: we wish every country with the resources would follow Sweden’s example. For Gary, we stopped at Öckerö, an island port which he sailed from 24 years ago in the Tall Ships Races. The ship he sailed, Hawila, had been sold but we soon tracked her down near Copenhagen. We decided to continue on to Denmark and promised Amelia more playgrounds.

When we reached Denmark, we able to tour Hawila and learn about the plans for her future. Then we visited Copenhagen and enjoyed the Reffen street food market and its fantastic array of international foods – especially a taste of home with some sweet fried plantains! With some advice from our friend Jane and her sister, we made a circle of Zeeland and some of the surrounding islands, enjoying the quaint thatched cottages and the beautiful late summer light, spotting wild ponies in Dovns Klint, and taking as many opportunities as possible to eat fish with remoulade sauce. We also tried Smørrebrød (Danish open-faced sandwiches) – picking some up for a picnic at a park that Amelia didn’t want to leave. We soon learned that despite being what we would consider “sandwiches” they are not finger food! Nonetheless they were delicious. Denmark also has great playgrounds, though some seem to be aimed at slightly younger children than the playgrounds we visited in Sweden. Amelia’s favourite playground activity was navigating the model traffic circles and roads in Copenhagen parks – important for teaching children traffic rules in a country where they cycle from a young age. She also loved the fabulous playground in Kolding which had a full track with moon cars, free paddle boats, and many play structures. On a playground next to one of our campsites, Amelia heard another child speaking English and Spanish and immediately ran over to meet her. We started chatting to the family and they invited us to visit them. We spent a couple of fun days together – eating delicious Spanish food cooked by Elvira, trying the town children’s sport of crab racing, and marvelling at Kjeld’s Lego collection – before it was time for us to move on.