Söderköping and Göta Canal

I really need to catch up on my blogging.... feels like I'm almost one season late now! Anyway, we made a trip to Söderköping in August to eat ice cream and to go on the train ride, which is what we'll do almost every summer.

Visiting the Göta canal is a must for every tourist, click on the link to find out more about the history behind it.

The canal passes through our city as well and occasionally we will go there to eat ice cream and play mini golf.

  

We wanted to eat at this famous ice cream place.  Their variety of ice cream is mind-boggling! However....

 

The queue is equally mind-boggling.... and this is just a part of it.... so we decided to have take away instead, which was just as good.

Taking the boat around Sweden through the canal requires teamwork!

There're a row of small shop houses selling this and that.

I really like this town because I think it's charming in a country sort of way.

Small stream passing through the bridge... 

Beautifully tended backyard, which shows how house proud the owner is.

 

Even the small white gate looks beautiful to me! How can you not be inspired and have the urge to live in such a place?

I mean, just look at this place! It oozes tranquility and country charm!

Laksa! (I apologize for the random-ness.... but I am random!) From the laksa paste which mom recommended me to buy from Singapore.  It was quite good, should have taken a picture of the paste, now I forgot which one it is...

Since it was summer,  of course we had most of our meals out on the balcony! (Actually, we seldom do that since we don't feel like "fighting" and being chased around by the tons of bees buzzing outside....)

Tropicarium and Motala beach

Tropicarium is located in Norrköping just opposite the zoo at Kolmården. It is a place where they re-created the rain forest (well, a very small one) with aquarium. The place is quite small, took us about 40 minutes to finish with a lot of stopping to look at animals, fishes, standing underneath the air condition vent, coz it was so HOT! I would recommend to make this trip together with the zoo, otherwise, it is too short a trip to make, coming all the way from Linköping.

Some sort of monkey.... I don't like monkeys but this one is so tiny, it is a little bit cute. (Just a tiny bit....)

Super cool, glow in the dark blue scorpion!

 

Looks like the boys found their tree house.

A nest of snakes.... ewwwww......

These piranhas looked so pretty with the golden spots on their bodies.

This guy was just swimming around with his mouth open all the time and looking creepy...

On the way home, we stopped at a resting place just outside the zoo for something to drink and munched on cookies.  The view was good!

This summer has been really really hot, with temperature soaring to around 32 degrees! It is the hottest summer we have ever experienced since I moved here 8 years ago.  It felt a little like Singapore but less humid.

Since the weather was crazy hot, guess where we went again? Motala beach this time!

This little guy loves water!

Mom catching up with her "business" on the iPad like a big boss.

These boys were digging a tunnel to Singapore....

 

It is so hot even Polly is lazy to go out, she prefers to chill out at home.  Sitting like a diva and watching tv....

"Mommy, I just watched a horror show, it's call "The Dog Whisperer"!"

Mom's first week in Sweden!

We arrived in Sweden on 17 July, 2014, Thursday.  Lars brought all the kids except Angel to the airport to fetch us.  Mom gave all the boys a hug, it has been 3 years since she last saw them! Chris even introduced himself by saying,"Hi, my name is Chris!" We arrived home and Angel had made fried noodles! I was so proud of her! It showed that she was listening and taking notes when I was teaching her how to cook.

Friday was a day to rest and for mom to orientate herself in the apartment.  She was playing with the small ones and got her nails painted by our professional in-house manicurist.

Angel made dinner again - Chili con carne!

Well done, girl!

We went to pick strawberries on Saturday, can't spend a summer without picking strawberries!  The weather was so HOT!

Ivan was picking and eating at the same time.

Mom hard at work.

Forgot what this species of strawberry is, but it is sweet and big!

Daddy likes to ask the kids to point at stuff when taking picture, the result is quite often - just plain weird....

We picked up some items from the supermarket on the way home to put together a strawberry cake, a must-eat for Swedish summer!

On Monday, we drove to Halmstad (about 3 hours drive away) for our mini vacation.  Sweden is hit by heat wave these 2 weeks, with temperature soaring to a record high of 32.4°C!!!! It is frying pan HOT!!!

This is the first time we had our 7-seater fully packed!

Arrived at Halmstad and walking towards downtown.

Walked by this cemetery on the way, which is in the middle of a housing estate.  The living and the dead living in perfect harmony! This will never happen in Asia....

The gateway to downtown, looks like an old fort.

Inside you'll find rows of shop houses, restaurants, cafes and cinema.

After some food, we drove to the most famous beach in Sweden, Tylösand beach.  It was an endless beach covered with boiling hot sand.... The Swedes were soaking up the sunlight and enjoying themselves (haven't they heard about skin cancer?!)....

And in typical Singaporean style, we were hiding under a teeny weeny umbrella which I happened to bring....

The boys went for a dip in the sea.

I was trying to maintain his decency...

 The next day we went to Halmstad adventure land. It opens at 10 am and we arrived at 11 something and this is what we saw....

There wasn't any queuing system at all! There were 3 ticketing counters opened and after queuing for a while, a staff came out and announced that the card machine is not working in counter 2, so everybody who is paying by card would have to queue at counter 1 and everybody who is paying by cash to queue at counter 2! And there was chaos with people joining in another queue and people at the back complaining that they can''t just merge the queue like that, and that staff who made the announcement, he just turned and left!

Families with young children was queuing onto the motorway! That was so dangerous!

Inside the water park

The happiest kid eaten alive by a dinosaur!

I think this place is over-rated...

We drove home the next day, everybody was sun burnt and tired.  On the way to pick up Polly from my mother-in-law, we dropped by Båstad to enjoy the gift voucher given to us by my MIL.

It is a cozy small town located at the southern coastline of Sweden.

The hotel which we were planning to eat lunch at only started their lunch serving at 12.  Since we arrived much earlier, hubby asked them to prepare picnic for us to take away instead.

The most luxurious picnic I have ever had! We had steak with grilled vegetables and potatoes.  Ivan and Chris had meatballs with pasta.

We even managed to find a really cozy and shaded area on top of a slope facing a corn field!

This is the highlight of this trip for me! I love this picnic spot!

Side note: I started coughing when my plane arrived in the Singapore air space, since then I had been coughing throughout my one week trip in Singapore.  On the way home from Singapore to Paris (transit), I started having fever and sore throat.  Thinking that it would pass I took some painkillers and was basically sleeping through Thursday and Friday after we arrived.  After coming home from the trip to Halmstad, hubby brought me to the doctor yesterday and found out that I have pneumonia.  So there wasn't a crazy amount pictures taken these past week coz I was in a daze from the high fever and violent coughing most of the time, and my voice returned only about 2 days ago.... rough start to our vacation days.  

But thankfully, I have my reliable hubby to take care of me. 

I'm blessed.