Treehouses and Viking Ships

Time to move on again to the Treehouse Hotel. Was it going to be as good as it looked on the TV, magazines and web sites?
After a slow drive in search of a big moose that we never found. There are only 400,000 moose in Sweden for us to find, should be easy they said? All we managed was a couple of juveniles and a bottle or two of beer!

We finally find ourselves at the Treehouse Hotel and walk into reception which turns out to be the cutest 1950s retro house filled with objects from a bygone era.

We check in and wander through a field of wildflowers into the woods and over to our home for the 1st night… Our super duper space ship! Much to Steve’s delight, the button is pressed, the lights come on and slowly down comes the ladder just like a sci-fi movie. Click here to view.

UFO’s have changed since Deb used to watch them as a kid, they now come with nespresso machines, comfy beds, mini bar and the most modern of campervan toilets.. The Cinderella! Incinerating all that comes near it, not sure how it works but it works very well!!

Like a kid in a candy shop, Deb blows up the alien she remembered to pack, unlike the time in Area 51 when she completely forgot to take it after having made the effort to go buy one to take, then drives 3 hrs to realise she had left it in her suitcase in Vegas! She’s one crazy lady… Poor kids and hubby..
Then it’s time for dinner, back through the woods and then into mosquito land… Very handy, we left the mosquito repellent in the car! They seem to find Deb super tasty.. So off she went into the meadow doing the windmill action with her arms until she got to the restaurant..Well at least she gets a free shot or two of Swedish botox in the face, an eyelid and a couple of less wrinkles on her face until the bites go down.

Dinner is a lovely home cooked meal of cheese pie, arctic char, brown bear and a raspberry tart all prepared by our host Britta, whilst there we meet Amy from New York who’s escaping the bustle of the New York life, shutting down the phone and Facebook to come get away from it all as Sweden is just the place to come chill!

Day two at the tree house hotel and off we go! Time to go get lost again or should we say explore and we do! Finally after a 1hr journey turning in to 2hrs and a few reindeer traffic jams later, we reach Storforsen, a stretch of rapids over 5 km and one of the biggest in Europe. A beautiful place with a huge amount of water tumbling down from the Arctic circle, (average flow of 250 m³ per second) As it spills over the edges and runs into separate pools it creates a lovely picnic area for the locals. People are having barbecues and swimming in the pools amongst nature at its best and the sunshine.

Next day we are off to the airport to fly down to Stockholm for a couple of days. Amy turns out to be on the same flight, so we share a supersaver ticket for 3 on the  Arlanda express straight in to the city.

Next morning we get up and go to visit the Vasa museum before the queues, Deb has wanted to do this since before she met Steve, so a big tick on the bucket list of life! Did we beat the queues, no not quite, is it worth it, Yes!

You really cannot believe that hundreds of years ago these guys built such a beast of a boat. What we did find out was just how small the vikings were, average of 5ft 5 inches. Yes Steve could have been a viking! So how did the Swedish men end up so tall?

So what have we learnt.

• Midnight Sun
  Something you really need to see.
• True Silence
  Something you need to experience.
• Stockholm is pricey!
  Everything is so expensive, wine and beer are about double what you pay in London. You need to find yourselves the Systembolaget. These shops are government run and you can buy a host of wines and loads of Swedish beers at prices more like you would expect.

• Must see in Stockholm.
  Vasa museum.
• People.
  No one rushes over here, they have a nice pace and politely queue.
  To Steve and Debs disappointment Sweden was not full of perfect beautifully blonde people, we had a vision that it was a land full of them but it was just a country full of lots of normal people, give or take some seriously long legs.
• Natural and Organic.
  It was so nice to see so much good quality produce, people living as they should, caring about the world around them and using eco friendly body washes etc.. Really wondered when in the wine shop (Systembolaget) how come they have loads of organic beers and wines at similar prices to what we pay in the UK for the same brand of non organic??? About 50% of there store was organically grown.
• Satellite Navigation.
  As many roads are gravel tracks don’t expect satellite navigation to necessarily find your local villages. Download an offline map from Google!

Live Happy

Steve and Debs