There is what is called 'autumn vacation' in Norway ('høstferie'), dating back to a time when the farmers needed help with their harvests, so children were allowed to take a week free from school. I don't know if there are/were similar traditions in the USA. I do know that we never had a week of autumn vacation as children growing up in New York State, although there were single-day school holidays scattered throughout autumn and winter. In any case, both children and parents often take a week off in the early part of October here in Norway. I've never taken any autumn vacation before, but this year, I decided to do so. I took a few days off, as did my husband, and one of the things we decided to do was to spend a weekend in Stockholm, Sweden. We drove through some beautiful countryside and saw some gorgeous autumn foliage before we arrived in Stockholm on Friday afternoon. We stayed at the Elite Palace Hotel on Sankt Eriksgatan street (
https://www.elite.se/en/hotels/stockholm/palace-hotel/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=google-local&utm_content=stockholm_palace), where we had stayed once before when my husband was in Stockholm for a PhD defense where he served on the doctoral committee that reviewed the student's work. That was in November or December 2006, when it was considerably colder outside; I remember that we visited Millesgården (
https://www.millesgarden.se/home.aspx) in 2006 and it was cold and rainy; the museum's cafe served hot pumpkin soup with feta cheese in it, and it was wonderful. The weather this past weekend was temperate, no rain, cloudy with some sunshine--perfect for walking. We did some exploring of the neighborhood around the hotel on Friday evening and ended up at an Italian restaurant called Grappa for dinner. On Saturday morning, we drove to a part of town called Pålsundet, a small strait (or canal) with many beautiful wooden boats located in that area, some on land, most still on the water. Since we had booked a early-afternoon three hour lunch cruise around the archipelago that is Stockholm, we made our way back to the hotel, parked the car, and then walked down to the main harbor to meet our boat. The boat trip brought us past many small islands dotted with lovely homes, and is well-worth taking as it is not expensive (about 90 dollars for two people including lunch, which was more like dinner). And when it was over, we walked back to the hotel through some lovely neighborhoods (the architecture in Stockholm is beautiful), and ate a late dinner at the Bishop Arms pub adjoining the hotel. I calculated that we walked a total of six miles on Saturday. On Sunday, we had a leisurely breakfast and just hung around the hotel until we checked out and headed for home.
I took some photos of our trip to Pålsundet, on our boat trip, and of Stockholm, and have posted some of them here. Enjoy.......
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| Running for the bus |
