Sweden - Stockholm

Over Easter Linda and I headed up to Sweden for 10 days. Neither of us had ever been to Scandanavian Europe so this was quite excitingly uknown territory!

We spent most of our time in and around Stockholm, which is a very nice city with plenty of shops, museums, parks, and cafés (with unexpectedly good Italian style coffee!).

On our first day we were lucky with the weather so headed out to Djurgaarden to visit Skansen, which is an open-air museum replicating historic Swedish villages as well as a zoo for Swedish animals.

This was a fantastic way to introduce ourselves to Sweden, and we learned a lot about the country that we would continue to notice through our trip. We also had our first tastes of Swedish food such as Raindeer and Trout!

We visited the Vasamuseet, which houses a naval ship built in the 1600s that sank almost immediately after being launched, thanks to a miscalculation about it's centre of gravity, and as a consequence is very well preserved.

Then we visited the Nordiska museet to learn about the Swedish cultural history.

We also explored the old town of Gamla Stan and visited the Southern island of Södermalm, where there was plenty of interesting shops and streets to visit.

We visited other areas of Stockholm also and, where-ever we were, we had a really fun time in Stockholm!

3 years later

On the 3rd of April 2007, Linda and I set off overseas with just a couple of bags of luggage and no real plan other than that we'd try to find jobs and see a bit of Europe.

Now it's 2010 we've been here for 3 years and I think it's safe to say that we succeeded in our rough plan, having found ourselves unexpectedly good jobs and seen (and eaten) amazing things.

Things haven't always worked out as planned and at times it has been extremely hard work and stressful (in 3 years, we've 'moved house' 7 times). It's also been difficult to be away from our friends and families at home, but there's no denying what a fantastic opportunity this has been for us both.

All we can hope is that the remainder of our time here will be just as amazing and that we can find some way to continue our adventures when we eventually make our way back home.

Heliski at Verbier

Last year Linda gave me a gift voucher to go Heliskiing at Verbier and I'd been itching to try it out, so when we were staying not far from Verbier and the weather looked promising I booked myself on a flight.

When I turned up, however, there was a fair bit of wind and we stood around beside the helicopter waiting for the green light. It was getting quite frustrating but eventually we got the go and off we went!

We flew over the Verbier resort and looked at all the groomed runs, which looked so small from above, and on to Mont Rosablanche.

From Rosablanche we took some time to take photos of the view over the mountains and back at Mont Fort before clipping into our skis and snowboards and taking off down the mountain, through deep untracked powder!

It was exhausting skiing through the powder, both because of the altitude and because I simply am not used to this type of skiing, but it was amazing just being "off piste" and the weather was perfect for it.

After some time we continued to descend through the valley and the snow became more hard-packed, and we stopped for a sip of wine and a rest outside a cabin.

The rest of the journey down was really difficult with icey, chopped up snow, and through a narrow ravine into the main valley.

By the end I was exhausted, and was happy for the chance to have some lunch and a beer to celebrate making it down in once piece!