Sweden holidays 2012 - Part 3: The fishing trip

Here below, photos from our full day fishing trip in "Riddarhyttan" with my dad, his wife and my brother. Riddarhyttan is a small place, near Skinnskatteberg, roughly 180km's North west of Stockholm with three small, black lakes where your biggest hope is catching Rainbow trouts ;p Our luck during the day? One caught......and my brother was the lucky fisherman! It should be mentioned though that Caroline also got one! ....or well, at least the taste of getting one, but unfortunately she lost it before it had been unhooked. 

Chris and I mainly got parts of the lake bottom on our hooks and both of us also went in to the lake pull out fishing lures, stuck in water plants or at the lake bottom.

Amazingly beautiful forests surround these little black lakes, making them feel magical.....

My first throws of the day from this little pier. This is while I was still able to stand up.....

A penny for an actual speech bubble to this picture?  =)))

Gorgeous water lily!

Danny and Caroline, trying their luck fishing for the first time =))

I went in to unhook Danny's lure. 30 minutes later, I saw a water snake. If I would have known..........that lure would still be stuck in that water lily.

Dad and Chris, working on Chris's throwing technique maybe? ;)

Caroline, getting the hang of it very quickly

Tony (my brother) and Chris

....as I had to lie down angling almost the whole day, I had lots of time to snap photos while just sporadically watching my float =p

Sunshine!

Chris's turn to go in to pull out a lure =)))

Still no luck, but still lots of enjoyment! Love fishing.....it's a kind of meditation for me.

Danny, still hoping today will be the day.....

After half the day, my back couldn't carry me anymore, so here I'm trying a new style of fishing:
"The laying down angling" ;))

My brother with his catch!!

Same fish, the next day.....hot smoked and delicious!

xox

Sweden holidays 2012 - Part 2: The countryside and the little floating house ;)

After spending some days in Stockholm, we headed out into the country side in the area where I grew up to spend some time with my family. On the agenda we had relaxing, spending time with friends and family, fishing and the yearly crayfish party! (the fishing trip and crayfish party will get their own blog posts.....).

The biggest surprise upon our arrival was finding out that the house I had rented for us to stay in (for 4 nights), which I thought had a lovely location just by the water was in fact ON the water.....without a toilet. In other words, a floating house ;)) Quite an "interesting" experience! Especially since the only way to and back from the cabin was by rowing boat and the toilet was in the harbor and well.....since I'm pregnant.....toilet visits are a lot more frequent than when not being pregnant....let's just leave it at that! Overlooking this little tweak, a super charming place though and besides having the occasional wet boat due to rain and the fact that I had quite a bad lumbago, it gave us some really funny and special memories =)))

Voilaaaaa! Here it is! Our floating cabin on the lake and our means of transportation =)))
This place can be found in a place called Borgåsund, close to Strömsholm.

Caroline became our designated rower! Turns out, she had some talents in this area =))

Strömsholms castle. One of the royal castles of Sweden.

One of the favorite things about this place is the many glorious oak trees.... I can walk around here for hours and used to climb in these all the time when I was younger!

Me on the Grand National race track. Here, pregnant in week 29.

....at my mom's and Kalle's (my stepdad) place, we got a lovely lunch prepared by Kalle:
Local Pike-perch with Almond potatoes, served with veggies from their garden.

Blueberry pie for dessert, made from blueberries from their forest....

Caroline and me, enjoying the hot tub in my mom and Kalle's garden.

Chris in the pool =))

Danny preferred to chill on the lawn though! As he's half Maltese, he couldn't understand why'd we want to go into that cold water! ....he did join us in the hot tub though as there, the temperature was closer to 40 degrees ;p

We had lovely light this afternoon....

Our floating cabin at night =))

xox

Sweden holidays 2012 - Part 1: Stockholm and Fooooood

From left to right, Caroline, Danny, Aryan & Chris

How do you even begin to summarize 16 days of holidays?? Well....you simply don't. At least not if you had an amazing time and certainly not when you have more than 1600 photos to show exactly how amazing that time was........so after a bit of thinking, I've decided to split it into separate photo blog posts. This is part one ;))

We traveled with Chris's sister Caroline and her boyfriend Danny. They arrived one day later than us and left one day earlier, but besides that, we were all together.
You will notice from the photos below that the Stockholm days were actually mainly focused on food, besides traditional sightseeing..... Under the photos, you'll find links to the various restaurants and sites etc. we have visited this time, worth recommending ;))

On arrival, we went with Aryan and one of her friends to Berns Asiatiska to eat their amazing sushi.
Very very good food and service!!

Knowing that Indian food is one of Caroline and Danny's favorites, Aryan reserved us a table their first eve in Stockholm at Indian Garden in the south side of the city. Apologies for the image quality!! It's taken with my iPhone with veeeeery bad lighting ;)

My main course was delicous!! I had Shrimp Papaya Balti.....with Naan of course.

The gorgeous Old Town of Stockholm. A must see.... Walking around here is fab!

.....talking about musts ;)) Soft ice in Sweden is absolutely delicious and in the Old Town, you find lots of places that serve these with various toppings. Here, one chocolate dipped!

Danny went for Marshmallow topping =p 

One of the great things about visiting your own country with visitors is that you are "touristing" and visiting places you wouldn't normally think of visiting. Here we are at "Skansen" which is a Swedish open air museum and Zoo. The perfect place for people who want to get a feel for our Swedish culture and fauna.

A Reindeer.... Lovely animals! 

This little cutie is not an official part of the Skansen animal attractions, but it's worth a visit just to see these! There are plenty around and they are incredibly tame....they even climbed up on our legs =)))))

Just outside the entrance to Skansen, you will find a restaurant called "Ulla Winbladh" who has fabulous traditional Swedish dishes and possibly the best meatballs in town ;)) We went there after our Skansen visit and nobody was even the slightest bit disappointed!

.....I had another Swedish classic - Lightly salt cured salmon served with dill creamed potatoes and lemon!
Divine!!!

Me and Aryan

Here, we are walking around the charming little "city" of Sigtuna. Small and insignificant as it may seem, it is the oldest city in Sweden and has this really cute small town Swedish charm to it. On top of that, it has some really cute little shops and great food and pastries.

Here some photos from the amazing little cafe "Tant Brun"! Please please don't miss this if you're in the area.....trust me! It's worth going here for nothing but these Cinnamon buns and their coffee alone!! As Swedish as it gets ;)

A must when visiting Sweden is this - Shrimp sandwich (this one is also from Tant Brun, as above)!!
Please make sure you try one with fresh, hand peeled shrimps to get the quality experience!! One of the things I miss the most from Sweden and one of the first things I order when I go home. Yuuuuuummy!

On our last evening in Stockholm, Aryan took us to a lovely little Persian restaurant called "Kharazmi".
We had a kind of meze plate with various little appetizers that were delicious!

I had the Meigo Polo, a kind of spicy shrimp risotto.
I had this already last time I was there and loved it so much I went for the same one again ;))

Later on during our holidays, we came back to Stockholm from the Archipelago for a day and took the opportunity to visit Chris's and my favorite Asian restaurant in Stockholm - East. 

Chris and Danny went for the classical option.....

.....and I, since I'm pregnant, went for tempura and cooked style rolls instead. SUSHI.TO.DIE.FOR.

I'm guessing at least 1 or 2 extra kilos were added to me during these 4 days! Ha ha haaaaa!! Will be worth the effort to get rid of those later though for sure.

xox