Road trip part I

When my godfather died three years ago he left all of his belongings in his will to me, my siblings and my dad - 10 people in total. Initially we had all of his antiques and art valued with the intention of selling, only to realise that we wanted to keep most of his stuff in the family. Fortunately dividing the items up and choosing who got what was remarkably easy, and in January me and my sister A, who lives in LA, went over to Stockholm to start emptying the flat and pack up the stuff that we were keeping. It was right at the time of the LA fires, and A didn’t want to bring any of it there, so she decided that she would go back to Stockholm in the summer, hire a car and drive everything down to her house in the south of France instead. She asked me to join her on a sisters’ road trip, with all the hotels and evening meals booked by her, as an early 50th birthday present for me. I can tell you now that I couldn’t have wished for a better gift! That week that we spent together gave us memories for life and for that I’m eternally grateful. A did the drive in six days, through four countries, all on her own her own, as it was too expensive to put me down on the insurance as well. The lady is a frickin’ powerhouse I tell you! She’d done most of the planning of the trip, which made a change from how it usually is when I travel with family and friends; I’m the one who does all the research and am in charge of finding where to eat, what to look at and where to sleep.

The majority of the days were taken up by driving, and then not really spending more time in each place than arriving, checking into the hotel, going out for dinner, staying overnight and heading further south the following morning. The longest of all drives was the first one, six hours, from Stockholm to Helsingborg, a city in the south of Sweden, which neither of us had been to before. There was a lovely walkway along the sea that took us to our restaurant that evening, and there were lots of people just hanging out, making the most of all the public seating, and the fine weather. Some people also photo bombed…

Pretty much all the food we had on the whole trip was really good. We had amazing sea food at Sillen & Makrillen, basically on the beach. Awful view, right?

On the way back to the hotel we walked through the older parts of town, as little granny here (me) wanted to check out the local architecture. Someone decided to photo bomb again (her).

Hello, how cute is this house? It was recently for sale, and you can have the tiniest of sneak peeks here.

We ambled along as dusk arrived, and I loved seeing the mix of it all, including this guy.

“What’s that?”

“I don’t know, let’s go check it out.”

Turns out Kärnan is a verrrrrry old fortress tower from the 1300’s (although it was most recently restored in the early 1900’s). To get up there you walk up the Terrace Stairs…

… which lets you see Helsingborg from up high. That mass of land in the distance is Denmark.

Even though we were only there for about 15 hours, it was our favourite city of the whole trip - a pleasant surprise, in spite of waking up to a parking ticket in the morning 🤦🏽‍♀️

6 from the 6th floor in the 6th

Found myself in Paris for a day this summer, in a stranger’s apartment filled with mainly strangers, during sad circumstances, but still full of joy. Weirdly being that high up felt comforting. Maybe the 6th floor of a building is the perfect height to be in, not too high, but high enough to give a different view of the world.

Fun times

It’s a rainy day here in London today (well needed as we’re heading towards a drought here), and I’ve sat myself down in front of the computer to go through my picture library, where I came across these - also from our summer days in France last year. I don’t remember taking so many of them but I’m pleased that I did, as looking at everyone’s expressions closely has really made me smile. I recommend that you take the time and look at them properly; I bet you’ll find that the joy on these young people’s faces has made its way onto yours too.

Last summer part I

Time for a recap from the time when I wasn’t blogging last year, starting with a bunch of random pix from France. For the last couple of summers we’ve taken the train down to the south, to spend time with my sister and her family at their house there. It’s not the most straight forward of journeys, but I like to think that if we can opt to go somewhere by train rather than fly, then that is what we do. This has usually worked out well, but last year we were unlucky in that our onward train from Paris got cancelled, as did all trains heading south that day - a mini tornado (climate change much?) had knocked down trees onto the tracks. So not only were we then stuck, but we were stuck in Paris, during the Olympics. Anyway, after standing in Gare du Nord for 5 hours in +35c degree heat (with armed police doing the rounds of the station because of heightened security measures - très relaxing), we got allocated a hotel room by the train company, ironically by CDG airport, and continued our onward journey the day after. I took this picture as we had to sit in the café carriage, waiting to be allocated seats on the train, and as I did a guy walked past and asked “Did you get a good picture?”, and you know what? I think I did.

So, we arrived a day late, which was luckily no big deal, and that evening we went for dinner in a small village with a view, where I took a pic of a selfie being taken with the view, rather than actually taking picture of the view. I did take a pic of the sunset though.

After the meal, as we walked back to the car, I was happy to see these two young guys playing pétanque past sun down.

It was very hot for the duration of our stay, as that’s what’s southern Europe is like these days, but dunking yourself in the pool to cool down always worked.

We were lucky (!) enough to have a couple of days when the weather turned. This cloud showed up a few minutes before there was an almighty hailstorm,

as did this one on another day, when the sky rumbled with thunder.

Another picture from after another dinner out, with one of my nieces tying her shoe laces. Her aunt found it picture worthy.

Me and my shadow, him and his shadow.

This is where we’d eat all our meals at home, while mosquitoes in turn would feast on us. Turns out my sis is an amazing cook who can whip up a multi-dish dinner for 10+ people, whilst also cooking something different for the youngest kids and for the one pescatarian grown up (🙋🏽‍♀️), without even getting remotely flustered.

A sunset without my glasses.

In one corner of a covered terrace a couple of swallows had nested, and they were working so hard every day to feed their little ones. I’m very chuffed that I managed to catch one mid-air with a worm/bug in their beak, on the way to the nest.

What else? Well, at one point there was some horse snuggles,

some very well trimmed trees

and some jumping shadows.

There was also a vineyard,

the moon

and time for star gazing. We’d go and lie on the pool loungers in the dark and watch the Persied meteor shower pass by, and shout “There!” every time we saw a ‘shooting star’. You don’t see this many stars home in London, so even just looking at a night sky like this, without a passing meteor shower, is pretty special.

We also had fun showing the nieces the magic of light painting, of which Mr Famapa is a master. He drew this one around one of the nieces with the torch on his phone, and I shot it on a long open shutter, and voilà - photographs are magique and that’s a fact.