Day 13 - Kalmar to Ekerö

After good basic Swedish breakfast at our hostel in the lovely town of Kalmar we packed the car ready for our next leg of the trip, this time taking us towards the capital of Sweden, Stockholm where we will be spending a few days with family and I think we’re all looking forward to a few days in one place.

After a small discussion in which way to travel we decide to take a small detour and travel west inland into the famous glass blowing area of Sweden,

where names like Orrefors, Kosta and Boda might sound familiar to most people even “down under”.

We arrived way too early as most boutiques seem to open at 10 am in Sweden, but this gives us time to watch some craftsmen working on an exhibition to be shown in Denmark.

Today they were making lanterns with handmade tiny glass fish that are put into the lanterns quite a beautiful art of work and Salme was like a kid in a lolly shop finding new friends wherever she goes.

We travel to both Kosta and Orrefors even buying some small things to remind us when we are back home and back to our everyday life again with only our travel memories.

Now we are ready to head north and towards our destination with very little traffic to talk about and the further north we travel the heavier and darker the clouds get, but for some miraculous reason the very grey/purple rain and hail clouds move further east toward the sea and we miss most of the heavy rain only a few sprinkles enough for our car to turn it’s neat little automatic windscreen wipers on, such a neat gadget to have.

During the last 30 km we pass Salme and Yvonne’s hometown not that you can see much with the highway going past most towns but a few familiar spots are seen very quickly as the car zooms past. Our only delay is the Friday rush waiting for the ferry to take us to the island of Ekerö, this being a much shorter trip than driving through Stockholm past the Royal Palace of Drottningholm where the royal family lives out to Ekerö.

Waiting for us is Peter’s sister Lisa, husband Lennart, Nina and Jim and it is good to stretch our legs, unpack the car and finally catch up it’s been 3 years since we last saw each other. After a lot of talking and an enjoyable dinner we finally hit the sack for some shut eye.