Swedish Junkfood

Leo got 5 Swedish chocolate bars for his birthday, so over the following several days, we were able to taste test them, as follows:

1.  Coco

Toasted coconut centre covered in milk chocolate.  Coconut and chocolate, what's not to like!  Two thumbs up!

2.  Japp Hazelnut.

Like a Mars Bar but with lots of whole hazelnuts.  Two thumbs up.

3.  Pigall

Like malted milk balls, but softer, with a chocolate coating.  Two thumbs up.

4.  Dubbel Nougat

Like an icy cup or a zero bar but with a layer of Hazelnut and a layer of almond nougut.  Leo:  Meh, too much lice an icy cup.  Connie: Yum, like an icy cup, but with an extra layer of almond nougat, delicious.  One thumb up, one thumb down.

5.  Daim

Like a Crunchy bar or a Skor bar.  Too hard.  No thumbs.

Consensus:  the winner is Japp Hazelnut!

Road Trip

The last two days were pretty much steady driving.  We are now in Linkoping, southwest of Stockholm, as we head toward  Falsterbo, the extreme SE point of Sweden, which is supposed to be good for birds right now.

Linkoping is the home of the Saab airplane factory. 

It rained hard most of today, but cleared up in the afternoon, and it's quite a bit warmer than it was at our campsite last night in Timra.  Timra had a pulpmill, but there was no smell in the town.  Unfortunately, the campsite was wedged between the train tracks and the highway, so it reminded me of not a few campsites in my own home province. 

We stopped for lunch yesterday in Umea, a "lively university town", according to Lonely Planet.  It seemed fairly sleepy to me, but maybe the university isn't in session yet.  We bought takeout food on the pleasant waterfront, and walked along the waterfront,

Connie slides off an artsyfartsy public bench/sculpture

past the city church and numerous attractive older buildings, down the pedestrian mall and through the town square.

Today was mostly driving on the E4 motorway, with diversion to bypass Stockholm traffic through a wheat growing region. 

                                      Leo makes tea amidst the waves of grain

Otherwise the most interesting thing was lunching at roadside restaurant that was built right over the motorway.

Gamla Linkoping

After supper today, we drove into town to see Gamla (Old Town) Linkoping , which turned out to be a Swedish Barkerville, only free, all shut up for the evening but wide open to wander around, with locals riding their bicycles and scooters through the cobblestone streets.

Bord of the Day:  Today we saw our first Jackdaw, a small and common crow all over Europe, but not present north of Rovaniemi.

Aloha Lulea

No it's not in Hawaii,  it's on the Bothnian Sea.  And we think it's a pretty great little city, and  the weather's pretty balmy after 3 weeks in Lapland.

Our campsite here is pretty enormous, built to accommodate the summertime visits to its beaches and its waterpark.  But now that its September, there's just two tents and a smattering of Germans in their caravans.

We visited the church town of Gammelstad today. The church was constructed in the 15th century,

and the local rural residents built over 400 small cottages and rowhouses to stay in when they came into town for church on Sundays.

 It was once the main town of Lulea until the sea receded and the harbour was moved to what is now Lulea.  Gammelstad is now recognized as a Unesco world heritage site.

It's beautifully preserved, and also pretty deserted on this, the first day of September.  The visitor centre and one souvenir shop were open, but all the cafes and restaurants were closed.   I think the few other tourists were  envious of us sitting in the town square, making ourselves a cup of tea and a sandwich.

Later in the afternoon we visited Naturreservat Ormberget-Hertsolandet.  We walked down the boardwalk to the lake and found a woman shouting first in Swedish, then in English, Help me!  Leo ran down to the dock and helped her reel in a giant trout. What a whopper.  Then he took a picture for her.

We took the boardwalk around the lake, past several nicely constructed firepits (essential, apparently, for any Scandinavian park), complete with wind shelters and even a cabin fir public use.

All around, as far as they eye could see, were blueberry bushes, full of big, sweet blueberries.

The undergrowth you see is pretty much all blueberries

I saw more blueberries today than I've probably seen in the last 30 years.

There weren't many birds around but we did identify the bird of the day, a black-throated loon.
On our return journey, the fisherlady was still there, with another big fish. Oerling she called them, and we think they are brown trout.

Then we headed downtown to the main library to use their wifi and ran into a food festival on the downtown pedestrian mall.  It must have been an international foodfest because there was no Swedish food.  So I had Polish perogies and Leo had Hungarian langos, a frybread topped with sour cream, shredded cheese and ham.

Vaelkommen till Sveriges

Today was our first rainy day, aside from some "heavy" mist on the Varanger Peninsula that really didn't inconvenience us.

We drove through the Brugedalen, where we stopped at a flea market where the women sold hand knit mittens and lefse (a kind of pale thin pancake) in plastic bags and the men sold reindeer salami and frilly pink polyester girls' dresses.

We were out of bread and milk, but it was Sunday in Europe and grocery stores were closed.  So we bought a sweet bun with chocolate chips in a gas station convenience store, but this is Europe so the buns were freshly baked and rather yummy.

They seem to be promoting bicycle tourism along our route today because everywhere were giant bicycle sculptures and real bikes spray painted in bright colours.

We stopped again in Narvik, site of a famous battle between the Germans and Norwegian and French Allied troops in 1940.  We failed to find a stone age drawing of a reindeer carved into a rock (it looks cool on the internet), but we did find the geyser (actually a big spray released from the power station building) that shoots off twice a day, coincidently right when it was shooting off.  Kind of a strange tourist attraction for a rainy day.  But also a good overlook over a gloomy looking Narvik

Unlike us the hardy Norwegians were all heading off on hikes or mountain bike rides despite the weather.

We managed to find a cafe that was open on Sunday, and then we headed off to our third country, Sweden, in search of drier weather and less convoluted roads.  We are still north of the Arctic Circle and have to make time to get back to Helsinki in 2 weeks.

And the sun did make an appearance once we crossed the border and the road did get straighter.  We stopped at a memorial to he Yugoslavian prisoners who built this road for the Germans.  They were not official prisoners of war and were not protected by the Geneva Convention, and many of them died from the hardship.

We camped at Kiruna, a mining town and aurora borealis specializing tourist town in winter.  It's a busy campsite, the kitchen was crowded tonight. 

We went for a walk in the hills next to the campsite.  Many of Sweden's 60-year olds were out proving their superior fitness to the average Canadian 40-year old by running or walking vigorously along the town's ski trail system.

Leo saw some whooper swans, ducks and grebes; Connie ate a lot of blueberries.

Ferry to Tromso

As we traveled south we really moved into the typical Norwegian scenery I imagined.  Fjords surrounded by mountains.

  We took two ferries across two fjords to get to Tromso, which itself is an island conected to the mainland by a bridge and are now camped on the outskirts of the city.

Tromso is the largest city we've been to yet (we really just saw the outskirts of Helsinki). After setting up our tent we drove across the bridge to downtown Tromso.  There was a rock concert going on that blocked off several blocks of downtown.  Old warehouses down by the docks have been converted into shops and restaurants.  The Lutheran Cathedral (built 1861) is the largest wooden church I've ever seen.

We started off our second day by visiting the Prestvannet reservoir located at the top of the island.  Here we saw our first loons of the trip, red-necked loons, 8 gray herons, Eurasian widgeons, a brambling (bird of the day), tufted ducks, and lots of mallards and gulls, both of which were trained to rush toward visitors in hopes of being fed.

Our next stop was Polaria, which had a really great wide screen film about Svalbard, Norway's most northerly island,  from the viewpoint of a little auk.  It's also an aquarium with 4 trained seals.

Then we visited the highlight of the day, also the superlative of the day, the world's most northerly botanical garden, also it's free, including the parking, which contributed to its being s highlight in pricey Norway.  The garden specializes in in Arctic and alpine plants.  In August the garden was obviously not at its prime blooming, but there were still a few blue Himalayan poppies, their speciality, in bloom.

Also, lots of birds here.

In driving to the garden, we discovered there's a system of tunnels under the city complete with underground rotaries so you don't have to drive up the steep hills.

Lastly we took the Fjellheisen cable car up Mount Storsteinen, with a great view of the city and it's surroundings.  There's a pricey restaurant at the top, of course, this being Europe.

From there we climbed up further to the cairn, which turned out to be false advertising, since the summit was quite a bit higher.

This is the first place we've been since leaving Helsinki, where we've experienced darkness during the night.  We're still north of Ivalo, so I guess it's the fact that it's the end of August.

Hamningberg to Alta

Hamningberg to Alta

The next day we retraced our steps, stopping for coffee and wifi after taking the tunnel over to Vardo.  Highlights of the trip were sighting six sea eagles

and a carcass of a dead seal on a beach (not all at the same time).  After returning to the head of Varangerfjord, we headed west, stopping at a campsite in Kunis. This is the second time we've arrived at a campsite only to find you have to call a telephone number to register.  Here the bathrooms were locked, so we couldn't take a chance that someone would show up later and take our money.  So we just turned down the next road we found and wound up at a fishing access point on the Storelva River.  There were several caravans camped here and even an outhouse.  After setting up our tent, we walked down along the Storelva to its mouth on the Laksefjord.  The sun came out for the first time all day, but  with the wind the air cooled quickly and we were early to bed.

Walking along the Storelva with the fjord in the distance

The next day we continued driving east and south, stopping at Stabburnes National Park to check out the visitor Centre and take a one hour walk out to the point on the fjord.

The vegetation is mostly crowberry, but also blueberry and another blue berry I don't recognise (edible, but not as tasty as the blueberries).

  Here we saw the bird of the day, the redshank.

We are camped tonight at Alta, the largest town we have seen in a wild, at a relatively urban campsite, crammed into a small lawn area with a number of bicyclists. 

Again we walked down along the river, the Altaelva.  Our campsite is the smallest of three campsites all on the same road.  There were several fishermen on the river and the banks were full of the traditional Sami riverboats, beautiful.

So beautiful in fact, they're worth another photo:

Lastly, a new feature, the superlative of the day:

The world's most northerly pine tree, or at least the one conveniently close to the road in the most northerly pine forest in the world -

You can see in the background another young pine tree, ready to take over, should the current most northerly pine tree succumb.

And, bonus bird photo,

this beautiful whooper swan

Camped at the End of the World

We left Vestre Jakobselv this morning and continued on around the peninsula.   We stopped near Kiby to check out some sea ducks (mergansers and eiders), and just happened upon these

standing stones.

We continued on to Ekkeroy where there was a seabird nesting cliff.  The kittiwakes had already left for the season, but we had a great walk among German embattlements from WWII below and above the cliffs

Stonecrop and sea daisies growing on the bird cliff

where we saw purple sandpipers in among the rocks and surf

 and the Bird of the Day, a sea eagle sitting patiently on a rock, before flying off and showing us its white tail feathers.

Lots of cloudberry patches here, but not many berries.  Anyone can pick berries on this nature reserve the sign said, but only the locals can collect the kittiwake eggs!

The further we drove, the shorter the trees got, till they disappeared altogether, the rockier the terrain and the narrower the road till it was just a single track. Once we entered Varangerhalvoya National Park we saw wild reindeer.  Unlike the domesticated reindeer we saw in Finland that amble down the middle of the highway, these ones run away when they hear a camera shut

We passed the tunnel to Vadso Island, and continued on till we reached Hamningberg and the end of the road where we camped by ourselves above the beach. Hamningberg was a busy harbour until the fishing industry was modernized with larger fishing boats.  It was abandoned in the 1960's and is now a national heritage site.

                                             Our campsite at the end of the world

Highlight of the Day

You may now refer to us by our official title as weasel whisperers.  After we called in a mink last summer by imitating the squeak of injured prey, we did the same today to an ermine we saw running down the beach.  It ran towards us and proceeded to amuse us for 15 minutes as it bounced around, coming ever closer, running in and out of burrow holes.   Leo got some great pictures.