I’ve done Swedish chocolate vs Norwegian chocolate. I’ve done Swedish chocolate vs Finnish chocolate. I’ve done Swedish chocolate vs Swiss chocolate. And now I’m doing Swedish chocolate vs Swedish chocolate. This is Swedish chocolate from a normal shop, not from Ikea or from the airport so it’s in its traditional yellow wrapper rather than the… More Swedish chocolate vs Swedish chocolate
I’ve talked about my year abroad before – mostly in terms of the travel I did between my work and the places I went. I did a degree in French & Spanish. I don’t really speak any Spanish anymore; my French is a little better than I’d expected it to be. If you’re a normal… More How I survived studying overseas
The first time I went to Iceland, we went out looking for the Northern Lights. It was really cold and we stopped initially in the car park of a small roadhouse in the south-west, a little way west of Hella (at the junction of the Ring Road, the 26 going north-ish and the 275 going… More Weird Souvenirs: a used horseshoe
I hate packing. I will always hate packing. I packed badly for Sweden and that’s for two reasons. I started two weeks early because we were packing bags at Brownies for the World Traveller badge & I wanted to show them a real-life semi-professional bag. But because it was two weeks away and I needed… More Packing for Sweden
I hate travelling with hand luggage only. I’m one of these weird creatures who would far rather take a bigger bag, check it in and wait for it at the other end. But I also refuse to pay extra for it unless absolutely necessary (when walking the Laugavegur Trail in the summer, it will be… More Useful Travel Items: folding day bags
It’s almost always worth getting out of the centre of a big city – it’s where the people live, it’s where real life rather than tourist life happens. I went out to the Stockholm suburbs because that’s where I was staying. We did spend most of our time in central Stockholm – Esther likes playing… More Getting out into the Stockholm suburbs
It was the summer of 2013. I was in Iceland. I had a bus passport and a little yellow one-man tent and I was circling the Highlands, Iceland’s inhospitable Interior. I’d already lost a day by not reading the bus timetable correctly, although a day accidentally spent at Landmannalaugar is certainly not wasted. And so… More I swam in a volcano, got rescued by Odin and walked into Mordor
The Laugavegur Diaries part 1 was published on March 1st but it was actually written in mid February so this first update covers my preparation from then until the end of March because this one is literally being written as a diary and updated as I go along. Booking Well, the walk itself is now… More The Laugavegur (Prep) Diaries: part 2
It’s just too easy to title this “Art on the T-bana” or something along those lines. But it’s true, some of the stations on Stockholm’s metro system, the Tunnelbana or T-bana, are indeed works of art. I didn’t notice them at first. The green line, which I used on my first couple of days, is… More Cave paintings in the Stockholm metro
Without my native guide (read: best friend from school who moved there last spring), I would have totally overlooked Skansen. It was certainly mentioned in my guidebook but it wouldn’t have caught my attention and even if it had, I probably wouldn’t have gone there. But Esther, who has three children under ten, has a… More I saw a moose in central Stockholm!