MIAMI
On friday H and I are leaving for Arlanda airport hotel. Early Saturday morning we're off to Miami. I'm looking forward a lot it's going to be so nice to see the sun as well as the States again. I just got to write the last part from my summer holiday in Britain.
But first Miami, shopping, Everglades, Key West and of course the top of the line Orlando and all the amusementparks....

22-24 th OXFORD

After arriving in Oxford we´re having a hard time finding somewhere to sleep. But after some calling and a visit to the tourist information. We find somwhere to sleep for 2 nights.
Oxford is a neat town and of course we are visiting the colleges. First we start with Magdalen College. Teh most beautiful of them all. The college was founded in 1458 by the bishop of Winchester, a lot of famous people have been studying at this college like Oscar Wilde, CS Lewis, T.E. Lawrence, J.Paul Getty and so on.
More famous people that I haven´t heard of...




They say C.S Lewis inspiration to Narnia came from these statues.










I wouldn't mind studying here myself.

After an interesting visit we are up for coffee and cakes



our hotel for the nights

Carpet in the bathroom, not that nice...

19th -22 th CARDIFF and a trip to Bath

Our hotel in Cardiff

The wiev from the hotel window

After checking in we have lunch at Nandos. Yummi Peri-Peri chicken at it best. Your choice of how spicy you want it I had it hot my brother medium. This is our new favourite restaurant.
Mermaid quay the waterfront. We walk around for a while but it's pretty cold and windy. After some walking we return to our hotel for some sleep.

The next morning we visit Cardiff castle.A castle with a history that dates back 2000 years to the Romans.

Cardiff is known for it's many Victorian arcades.


Later on we decide to go for a long walk to the small village Llandaff. It't such a pretty small village. With the Llandaff cathedral in the centre. The cathedral was badly damage during the World War 2. It takes us the wole afternoon to walk back and forth but it's really worth it.


Early morning we go on an excursion to Royal Bath the home to Jane Austen. Our prime stop is Roman Bath. On our way on my brother break the zipper on his raincoat he got to tear it up. Can't help it but I think is pretty funny he's not. Bath is a lovely town I could have spend some more time here. But we only have a day and it's really pouring down. My brothers raincoat is not working that well since the zipper still is broken. We start of with a walk to The Royal Crescent. Residental houses built beetwen 1767-1774 it's one of the greatest example of Georgian architecture too be found in Great Britain. A lot of films and tv shows has been filmed on this loccation.


Then it's time for one of the best museum during this tour. Roman Bath ia a well preserved Roman site forpublic bathing. It has natural hot springs underneath the city.




The next day our journey continues to Oxford the home to J.R.R Tolkien, CS Lewis and Lewis Carolle

Papa Beaver's story time

I finally found it the intro to Papa Beaver. The best show ever for younger kids during my time in the States 1996-1997. I get sentimental.

What happen to my holiday in Great Britain? My plan is to tell you more during the weekend. I have been so buzy with other things. House renovating for example.
PS We got the tickets to Miami, both the flight and car rental tickets.

Top five in the States

I like this song with Taylor Swift

More music

Can't help it but I like this one as well The same group that had the one hit wonder Barbie girl.
Yes lets go back to the 80ies I loved Don Johnsson and Miami Vice, Bananarama, The Cosby show, Dynastin and so on...

New music

I really like this song...

P.S

I just got to whisper something very quiet. I'm going to Florida but schhh don't tell anyone it's a secret. This time I WANT SOME SUNSHINE ON MY HOLIDAY AND PLENTY OF THEME PARKS SCREAMING YYYYYYYY I*M ON A ROLLERCOASTER SPINNING AROUND AROUND AROUND. NOW I*M SHOUTING IT OUT LOUD I*M GOING TO THE STATES end of November.

17th -19th

Leavi'n York for Manchester our next stop. The plan is to visit Pleasure Beach on Friday, Pleasure Beach has a huge theme park. But we never gets there cause it keeps raining the whole time it's really pouring down heavily.
Manchester is a huge and ugly city. The city has been destroyed many times most recently during the 1996 Manchester bombing an attack undertaken by the IRA. The largest bomb since the Second World War. Several buildings was demolished.
On the photo you can se a Ferris wheel from the area where the bomb detonated the epic centre of the blast.

Manchester is great for shopping though as well as eating Indian food.The best place to have Indian food is Rusholme home to the curry mile with Indian restaurants as far as you can see. Rusholme has the biggest Indian settlement outside India. Of course we walk there in the rain it takes us 45 minutes but it doesn't matter we're having Indian food tonight. The next day we visit The Imperial War museum. In the evening we buy train tickets to Cardiff the capital of Wales.

15 th - 17 th of July York

York was really nice and the weather was a lot better than in Edinburgh. Directly from Edinburgh/Scotland we took a train back to England/York. I had already booked the train tickets from Sweden as well as the hotel in York. So when we arrive we only got to read the map to find the hotel. We did a good job and actually walked as the map said. I guess we were lucky and just made the right turns. Like the perfect tourist we started immediately touristing.


First a visit to York Minster.The largest gothic cathedral in Northern Europe. The Minster stands on a site where history has been made over the centuries. I find the English history very exciting.

View from the top of the central tower a lot of stairs up and up. My brother was exhausted when we reached the top and said that he is to old for this. I can only agree from my point of view. Whenever I feel for exercise I lay down again until the feeling passes...

After that we went back to the hotel for a few minutes rest. And then we took a tour around the town of York. We bought some lovely fudge and made a lot of walking. For dinner we had Indian food it was so good.

The fudge store

A walk on the old defence wall.



The next day after breakfast we visited Jorvik viking centre. I thought it would be the highlite of the journey, but it was really bad. The entrance fee was very expensive £8.50 and the tour didn't take more than 35 minutes. What a boring a lousy museum. After a very disappointing museum. We went to the York castle museum that was great.
York Castle Museum is one of Britain's leading museums of everyday life. It shows how people used to live by displaying thousands of household objects and by recreating rooms, shops, streets. It had a recreated Victorian street, Kirkgate, that combines real shop fittings and stock with modern sound and light effects, all to give tourists like me a real atmosphere of Victorian Britain. LOVE IT

An old Victorian candy store.

We picked up some cakes from Bettys the day before my brothers birthday, since you never know if we have the time on his real birthday tomorrow.

And after tea and coffee on the hotel room we went to the National Railway museumIt was huge admission free. My brother liked it but I was really tired it would have been more interesting if we had some more time the next day.

And some more...


Mallard holds the world speed record for steam traction on rail. The record was set on the 3rd July 1938 when the locomotive was recorded travelling at 126 mph.
Name: LNER 4-6-2 A4 class No 4468 Mallard
Class: A4 4-6-2
Built: 1938, Doncaster
Designer: Sir Nigel Gresley
Weight: Locomotive 102 ton 19 cwt
Cylinders: (3) 18.5x26
Driving wheel Diameter: 6' 8"
Boiler Pressure: 250 lb / sq in
IF ANYONE IS INTERESTED...

12-15 th of July Edinburgh

We arrived to Edinburgh at noon time. So we had some time in the afternoon to walk around. The weather was alright but as everyday in Scotland during our stay it was showers. Edinburgh is a very different city loads of stone architecture so it was a pretty grey city. See for yourself.


The Edinburgh castle was nice.





We stayed at the Edinburgh first it was a pretty long walk from the hotel down town. It is a part of the University so we ate our breakfast in the student cafeteria. I ate Stilton cheese for breakfast on croissants, yummy.

The other day we went inside Edinburgh castle to learn about the history of Scotland. THe castle itself was nice and it didn't rain in the beginning.


Getting in the mood bagpipe...



We made a lot of walking and saw some more buildings made of stone of course.




One evening we visited Mary king's close Hidden beneath the Royal Mile a warren of hidden closes. For centuries they have lain forgotten and abandoned they opend up pretty recently. The Close consists of a number of closes which were originally narrow streets with houses on either side, stretching up to seven storeys high. In 1753, the Burgh Council decided to develop a new building on this site, the Royal Exchange (now the City Chambers). The houses at the top of the closes were knocked down and part of the lower sections were kept and used as the foundations for the Royal Exchange. The remnants of the closes were left beneath the building.

Another day we went to The Royal yatch Britannia The former Royal yatch of the British Royal family. We went around on a self guided tour with an audioguide in Swedish, weird I would have prefered one in english instead.

From inside where the Queen had her afternoon tea.

We also walked up to Arhur's seat a group of hills in the centre of Edinburgh. It was formed by a vulcano.

After Edinburg our journey continue by train to York.

I'm back again from GB. We had a nice time but it was very rainy almost everyday there was showers. But the weather in Sweden was not that great either so I didn't miss anything. The time passed by so fast and we saw a lot of things and went to I think it was 16 different museums, interesting. The museum I liked the most was the Roman bath house in Bath really lovely. My brohter liked the Royal boat Britannia and Cabinet of war. We had a lot of great Indian food as well as nice chicken at Nandos. I got some real great photos I'll show them tomorrow. Beacause now we're going for dinner in town, Chineese. See you...

Tomorrow I'm leaving for Edinburgh and I'm not coming back until the 28 th of July.
To my friend in Germany good luck with the baby birth and a big hug.
Have a nice summer.

Big plans

Big plans going on or rather small plans. Finally a trip somewhere outside Sweden. I got cravings for an airport sooooon. Yes soon my brother and I are at the airport. We're heading for Scotland, this summer. A visit to London is a must but also York, Bath and Brighton. Loads of architecture and history with plenty of old castles to visit. Maybe I see an highlander. I'm Duncan McCloud of the Mccloud clan. I'm immortal...
(From the tv series Higlander)

This is my home Sweden...
Enjoy

This is not far from my house actually just a short walk...



I love the area around our house, it's just perfect.









This is the best time ever of the year. It's not getting dark until really late. Every evening we are spending outside in the garden and on lovely walks. There is so much to see...

CIO!
Are you still there. I have been in no mood for writing on my blog. But today I felt maybe I should post something. Otherwise my blog will be dead. So now I'm here. We're still renovating on our house. Mostly we have done work outside in the garden. But we have also been doing some painting on the wooden floor in J.s room. A weekend with so much work but it turned out real good. My car the Mercedes has been broken for a while but on Tuesday I'm getting it back. I'm thinking of buying somtehing smaller we'll se.
My brother has been here today and we have started to make plans for the summer holiday. But this time it's hard we're not quite sure were we are going. One thing for sure It takes time and energy to be a house owner always working with something...See you maybe tomorrow...

Long time no see

House renovating still in progress. Last weekend me H and J went to Stockholm on a museum tour. We started with a visit to The Swedish museum of natural history as well as Cosmonova . Cosmonova is Sweden's only IMAX® theatre. We saw Sea Monsters in 3D a prehistoric adventure. That was pretty cool J enjoyed it a lot. We also went to the movies as well and saw Yes man. Had some nice food and on Sunday we went to Tom Tits experiment. They had 600 different experiments for all ages, both adults and children. We all went for a ride in an built in slide a thrilling ride from the top to the bottom of the house (44m long). I can guarantee you that my voice echo in the house...

Friday evening me and H went for dinner at this really nice restaurant.We had a 3 course meal.
Starter: Moules à la mariniere
Main course: Lamb rack with risotto
Dessert: Chocolate cake with mint cream and coffee.








After a nice evening we went back home again and watched this movie.



Tomorrow back to reality again and do some painting again and again...

DETAILS FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE WORK STILL IN PROGRESS