Sweden: Part I of an Undetermined Quantity

Apparently it’s not exactly easy to post about extended travels. Especially when each day was a trip in and of itself and how, exactly, do travel bloggers do it? How? Because after spending five days editing the first part of my pictures (it wasn’t just editing. There was catching up on Melissa & Joey and The Newsroom and Suits and stuff. Multitasking at its finest!), I’ve spent another three wondering how, exactly,  was I supposed to start? Do I do the places I’ve gone and then separate posts for food? And what about all the pictures I took? On average, how many photos and words is a person willing to read in a blog post before they exit? (Have you already exited this post?) After thinking all of these deep, deep thoughts, I finally realized that I hadn’t actually started anything and the days were passing and so, here we are. With a lonely blog, a rambling blogger and lots to share under the cut. 

After finally arriving early the morning of the ninth in London, I spent a day recuperating (aka: taking that much needed shower, doing laundry, eating pizza and then falling asleep before my head hit the pillow) before heading to the airport and arrived early the afternoon of the 10th in Malmö. From there it’s about a 30 minute bus ride to Lund. (The ‘u’ in Lund is like the French’ u’. Not the flat ‘u’ in English. Saying it with a flat ‘u’ means ‘country’ in Swedish and the poor girl behind the counter had no idea where I wanted to go. In case you were wondering.)

My lovely  cousin (her picture shows up later) was there to pick me up and gave me the day to do more of the whole eating/sleeping thing, for which I was grateful. The next day, we did a bit of a tour. We headed off to Ekeby, where our family is from and got to see the houses where great-great-great grandparents lived and raised their children and worked in the surrounding coal mines. There is a museum that we also visited, though I unfortunately don’t have the name of/links for. The house above is where family used to live and my cousin told me about how she remembers playing with cousins in the road and spending summers and holidays there.  Which sounds a lot like how I grew up and it’s interesting to see how even oceans don’t make families all that different from each other.

After getting lost and finding ourselves again, we stopped by a little café whose name has completely escaped me, but if I find the paper that has it, I will come back and edit it in.  My cousin, who I could introduce to you all as the woman in the second picture who also has a name, which is Agneta, and I sat down for what ended up being our little routine during my stay: coffee and a snack. She and I chatted and I was childlike amused by the triangular and quirkily designed creamers before we bought some bread and headed on our way.

We headed to Helsingborg and I really do wish that we had a.) either gotten there slightly earlier or else b.) that I had had the chance to go back because it was lovely and so many of the various things were closed/we didn’t have the energy to get to all the places that we wanted to go. As much as those things didn’t happen, what we did do was walk around Helsingborg. There we saw Kärnan, City Hall,  and St. Mary’s church.

The view from the castle down onto the steps and out across Helsingborg was absolutely breathtaking. Especially as we were there as the sun was setting.

We also did some wandering about Helsingborg. I didn’t take as many photos as I thought I had (either that or I did and the thought of editing the entirety of my memory card’s contents was enough for me to blank on some of them), but here are some of the various interesting things that we saw before we headed for dinner:

Since I did  take a lot of photos and I also don’t want to give too much to read in each post, I’ve split up some of the days. Tomorrow I’ll have a few other pictures from our evening in Helsingborg.  Because everything was really pretty and the pretty should be shared.

Things I’m Loving:

About Instagram – (And why it might be why you’re slightly unhappy.)
This song – (For a summer’s afternoon.)
A salad for summer – (Because who doesn’t love watermelon?)
This blog  – (A family of five living in a space smaller than 700sq feet. Now that’s different.)
All these DIYs – (If you’re feeling crafty.)
This recipe for sangria – (Maybe you’ll drink that while you snack on this.)
An interesting project – (Something new to look forward to every week.)
This looks like an interesting read – (About the things we care about.)
How to visit Paris – (Fun, even if you’re not going on a honeymoon.)