Travels

MONDAY, JANUARY 19, 2026   

Storlien for Christmas, New Year's, and Epiphany

It was another perfect year where the winter bank holidays all fell on weekdays, meaning that we could take a three-week Christmas vacation without using up very many vacation days.  After last year’s dearth of snowy and ski-based vacations, we decided to rent a cabin 

in Storlien, which is about 8 or 9 hours northwest of Stockholm in the Swedish mountains on the border with Norway.  We chose Storlien because it is one of the few somewhat good-sized ski destinations in Sweden that we had never explored, and because Storlien is generally a very snow-safe location.

We had a good winter break in Storlien, but it wasn’t the best ever because the weather was challenging.  Our visit was characterized by extremes—from above freezing and rain to a blizzard with hurricane strength winds to extreme cold with temperatures dipping to -30C / -22F.  Between the lack of snow, the storm, and then the cold snap, the adventuring was a bit limited.

When we first arrived, what little snow there was had half melted and refrozen into an ice sheet, making any form of skiing impossible.  Luckily, we had brought our snowshoes which have jagged soles, giving us enough traction to walk on the ice.  We set out on a couple of fun snowshoeing expeditions in the hills around Storlien.    

The rain melted away what little snow there had been when we arrived, so we spent a day driving to a couple of well-known waterfalls in the area.  The trail down to Tännforsen was an ice rink and extremely hazardous, but we managed to cautiously cut our way through the somewhat less icy forest to enjoy incredible waterfall views.  

We then drove to Enafors where we battled more ice to reach the falls at Handölsforsen.  Here we sat and enjoyed a picnic lunch while gazing at the water and icefall.

This stop was a little extra interesting to me because it is an example of small-scale energy production that creates an impressive amount of electricity, supplying 900 households with their energy needs, while neither requiring a large dam nor very invasive infrastructure.  From the waterfall vantage point, you’d never know that some of the water is being diverted into underground tunnels for energy production.  I’m anti-dam by nature but this solution is an interesting compromise—not appropriate everywhere, but in some places, yes.      

 
During the blizzard, the winds were crazy strong so we didn’t feel comfortable setting off on a long adventure.  We stuck close to the cabin and managed a few short loops on snow shoes and later on touring skis.

The weather wasn't really cooperating, but our car was ready for adventure!  Snowshoes, downhill skis, cross-country skis, and touring skis.

 
The blizzard dumped close to a meter of snow, giving the nearby ski resorts enough snow to open some, but not all of their slopes.  The Storlien ski resort opened about 2/3 of its runs, and Åre, Sweden’s “Vail” about an hour east of Storlien, had about half of its runs open.  Neither ski resort opened any of their steeper runs.  Carl and I had been hoping for more downhill skiing, but we only skied once at Storlien and once at Åre.  Storlien is a small ski resort, 

and when none of the more challenging runs are open, it’s not super enticing to keep repeating the same easy slopes day after day.  

Åre’s range of open slopes was also limited, 

and with the two-hour drive to get there and back, it wasn’t super appealing to go all the way there multiple times.  

The extreme cold also hampered our desire for downhill skiing.

Storlien and the neighboring areas have a good number of cross-country skiing trails, but they were of course not groomed for the first half of our trip.  Even once the snow started falling, many of the trails weren’t groomed regularly, making for less-enticing skiing.  We did, however, enjoy a surprisingly good day of cross-coutnry skiing at Fagerlia near Meråker in Norway.  This system of trails had beautiful mountain views.  In true Norwegian fashion, the trails were hilly but not nearly as extreme as those we encountered in Oslo at the beginning of 2025.   

We enjoyed some lovely cross-country skiing in Storlien where there are two competing networks of trails making for an extensive mesh of trails, some flatter, some more challenging.  We spent several fun days skiing these trails and enjoying views of the Storlien ski resort as well as of Snashögarna, the high mountain group which dominates Storlien’s skyline.  

My favorite day of cross-country skiing was at Björnen in Åre.  This 15km trail undulated with small uphills and downhills, but none of the hills were particularly steep or long, making for a tranquil roller coaster of cross-country skiing.  We stopped at a café at a historic copper mine along the way and enjoyed both a savory waffle with slices of moose roast and horseradish crème and a sweet waffle with cloudberry jam and whipped cream.  A yummy treat!  

We spent more time tour skiing than I had expected due to the adverse conditions and lack of grooming on the cross-country trails.  

The most memorable expedition was along the flank of Snashögarna where we unsuccessfully tried to ski to a waterfall.  We were blocked by too-steep terrain and had to turn around, but the trip was a success anyway because of the beautiful, clear views to Åre and into the Sylarna mountains.   

We set out at dawn and were back at the car at dusk.  Not such a long day considering that sunrise was at around 10am and sunset at around 2:30pm.

On one of the extremely cold days, we drove two hours each way to visit Trondheim in Norway.  Trondheim is best known for its impressive cathedral, Europe’s northernmost gothic cathedral and an ancient pilgrimage destination.  

The church truly was magnificent—I especially appreciated the effectful lighting which really highlighted the beautiful structure.  

The cathedral’s construction began in the Romanesque era which is visible in the transept with its rounded arches.  

After visiting my first stave church in Bergen this fall, I was particularly intrigued by the transept’s wooden ceiling which was very similar to the stave construction.  

The nave 

and choir 

are solidly from the Gothic era, and the carved details were just stunning. 

The inner city of Trondheim is also charming with its meandering river 

and charming neighborhoods.  In between stops in cozy cafés to warm up, we wandered through a few of the historic neighborhoods.  

None of the buildings were ostentatious, but I enjoyed the wooden detailing. 

   
We also climbed up to Kristiansten fästning, a historic fortress protecting Trondheim.  It was poignant to visit this fort because it is the same fortress that resisted Swedish forces in the winter of 1719.  When the Swedes were unable to take Trondheim, the troops were ordered to retreat back to Sweden.  While crossing the mountains, the ill-prepared troops were caught in a snowstorm and 4300 of the 6000 soldiers froze to death.  We had even visited one of the many monuments to this horrible tragedy earlier on the trip, so that doomed march was on our mind.

I was also taken with Stiftsgården, a royal palace from about 1775 that is adjacent to Trondheim’s central square.  I imagine that it is Europe’s only royal residence with a wooden facade?  

Despite only being two (tall) stories high, the palace is not overwhelmed by the scale of modern downtown Trondheim.  Many of the historic wooden structures remain, and while the newer development from the various architectural epochs is taller, these buildings don’t dwarf the palace.   

In Bergen, I had noticed that the city had beautiful, custom manhole covers depicting the city's history.  Trondheim had its own covers.

 

There are no cathedrals in Storlien but we did visit a couple of scenic chapels, a modern one at Storvallen 

and a more historic chapel at Handöl. 

Even though we managed an outdoors adventure all but two days of the trip, we spent far less time outside playing in the snow than usual.  But that meant that we had more time in our super cozy cabin for leisurely meals, reading in front of the fire, 

naps, games, and snuggling with Gordon.  

We have a long tradition of cabining together with Carl’s Aunt Eva in the winter, and this year was no exception.  Eva joined us for a week and we spent most evenings chatting and playing games in front of the fire—a very cozy time together! 

Right: Ris alá Malta, a traditional Swedish Christmas dessert.

 

The cabin was very atmospheric, but its heating system couldn’t quite keep up with the extremely low temperatures during the cold snap.  The heat was on max/high, but the indoor temperature in the living room was only 7C / 52F.  The insides of the inner windowpanes were getting frosty.  Poor Gordon, we felt really bad for him having to spend all day in the cold cabin.  We built him caves with down and wool blankets, and he spent the better part of several days buried in his insulating nests.  Luckily, our evening fires helped to keep the cabin a liiiitle warmer, and the cold snap only lasted a few days, so the cabin was soon back up to normal temperatures.  

Storlien is a long drive—8 or 9 hours from Stockholm—and is probably at the outer limit of what we want to subject our cat Gordon to as he is not a fan travelling in the car.  There are interesting winter destinations farther north, but we probably won’t explore them by car in the near future.  While this year’s winter trip wasn’t our favorite winter vacation ever, I could see trying Storlien again later in the winter season when the ski resorts have hopefully gotten enough snow to fully open and when the cross-country tracks are hopefully groomed more regularly.  There’s certainly a lot of potential for winter fun here. 

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 09, 2025   

(Gamla) Linköping at Christmastime  

Today, Linköping is a smallish but thriving city about 2 hours south of Stockholm by train, 

but historically, Linköping was the seat of a very large and wealthy bishopric covering much of southern Sweden as well as the prosperous island of Gotland.  The king and the nobility certainly had power here, but it was the church that wielded the strongest influence—until the reformation when King Gustav Vasa claimed all of the church lands and wealth for the bankrupt crown.  The cathedral was allowed to remain as a cathedral in the new Church of Sweden, but the bishopric’s vast real estate holdings were transferred to the crown and the fortified bishop’s residence became a royal castle.  

the bishop's residence / royal castle

  

When the city center was being modernized in the mid-20th century, many of the quaint historical buildings were moved to the outskirts of the city to a new “Old Town” called Gamla Linköping.  This assemblage of historic buildings was inspired by Skansen and other open-air museums, but unlike those precedents, Gamla Linköping is open to wander through without buying a ticket, many of the buildings are occupied by “modern” business including the obligatory cafés and cutesy boutiques but also by lawyer’s and medical offices, and many of the houses are rented out as private residences.  Gamla Linköping is quaint and picturesque, but it is also very much a living city neighborhood.

I very briefly stopped in Gamla Linköping for a coffee with co-workers when we visited the city on a work trip several years ago, and I fell head-over-heals in love with it.  Upon learning that a) there’s a Christmas market in Gamla Linköping every year and b) some of the historic buildings now make up a hotel, I was determined that Carl and I would visit and stay one year.  In previous years I’ve checked too late to reserve a room, but this year, when we learned that Carl’s sister’s kid Blue would be studying at the university in Linköping for a semester, I booked us a room for the Christmas market more than 6 months in advance. 

the hotel's buildings

 

Carl and I took the train down to Linköping on the Friday of the First of Advent, then took a city bus 10 minutes to Gamla Linköping.  After checking in, I picked us up some take-out sushi and Blue came to join us for dinner in our cozy room which even had a comfy sitting area.  We caught up on the latest news over sushi and then had a fun evening of board games. 

The next morning, Carl and I had breakfast at Gamla Linköping’s cozy café then proceeded to stroll through the entire Old Town, even taking in a large farm on the other side of a wooded walk.  

Being an archidork, I of course loved all of the old architecture, but Carl was also charmed.  

None of the architecture was in any way surprising for me, but I did enjoy noticing the local details, 

especially the window trim that visually elongates the windows, making them seem taller and more vertically proportioned than they really are.  

 

When the Christmas market got going later in the morning, we started browsing the stalls and stores.  Blue joined us a bit later and treated us to a lovely, cozy waffle lunch.  

After more browsing and some warm glögg (spiced wine), the three of us retreated back to our room for more games.  Blue had other plans for the evening, so Carl and I enjoyed our picnic of market finds on our own.

On Sunday, we wandered Linköping’s center.  Blue gave us a walking tour of the various squares 

and of the canal, and we spied a few of Linköping’s remaining medieval buildings.  

We enjoyed a couple of history museums but really, the Linköping Cathedral took the cake for the day.  

The cathedral replaced a smaller stone church which had in turn replaced an even smaller wooden chapel.  Built from about 1250 to1450 during the transition from the Romanesque to Gothic styles, there are still some rounded Romanesque arches to be found, but the cathedral is largely Gothic.  

It is a more restrained Gothic than in England or in France, but by Swedish standards, it’s a very ornamental church. 

We visited the cathedral while the choir and orchestra were practicing for the Advent Sunday service.  Their powerful performance of the Hallelujah chorus gave me shivers and was quite the dramatic auditory setting for touring the cathedral.   

The ornate 800-year-old stone carvings are beautiful, of course, but I was most taken by a very simple, more modern series of artworks laid among the gravestones and flagstones in the floor of the cathedral.  There were perhaps 10 small, illuminated glass globes under clear glass in the floor.  Very simply carved phrases encourage you to ponder life and spirituality as you wander around the cathedral.  One read, “Love.  Let me be one for someone.”  Another said “Carefreeness.  Every day has enough of its own torment.”  Yet another read “Quietness.  Breath out darkness, breath in light.”  

There was also a very moving bronze sculpture depicting a homeless man lying on the cathedral floor, facing toward the wall.     

 
We took a late-afternoon train back to Stockholm and were home in time for a simple dinner.  It was extremely cozy to experience Gamla Linköping’s Christmas market and hotel, and I had so much fun exploring the very livable and just-right sized city of Linköping.  Just charming!  Thanks Blue for hanging out with us old folks!  
               

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2025   

An Autumn Skåne Weekend  

Carl and I took the train down to Dalby last weekend to visit our friends and godchildren.  We hadn’t seen most of them for quite some time, and it was so lovely to catch up!  They have moved since we visited last, from an urban neighborhood in Malmö to Dalby, a hilltop village outside of Lund in the province of Skåne in southern Sweden.  It’s a bit ironic that Dalby sits on top of the biggest hill for miles considering that the village’s name literally translates to “Valley Village.”  

Dalby is surrounded by beautiful farm country, but there’s a surprising amount of nature around.  Many of the nature reserves are at the picturesque junction between nature and culture where man’s hand has, through the millennia, shaped a landscape that is especially appealing to the human eye.  We spent much of the weekend exploring several of the small but lovely nature reserves.  The fall colors made the scenery even more gorgeous.  Such pops of colors really brightened up the grey, drizzly days.

On Saturday we biked along a wonderful rails-to-trails bike path 

The family dog hitches a ride in the cargo bike

to reach a series of nature reserves where the Skånekeden, or Skåne Trail, meanders through.  We hiked across farmland where sheep and cows were actively grazing and even watched as one herd of cows cantered by, following a mother-and-child team of farmers toward the barn.  

Much of the hike was through beech forests which were turning an incandescent yellow.  Appropriately enough, the book I was reading over the weekend, The Overstory, has a tree theme, and one sentence on beech trees really stood out: “Hazy and pale in the spring, but in autumn, its flat, wide sprays bathe the air in gold.”  

Parts of the beech forest were up on steep sandy ridges left behind by the last glacial retreat.  It turns out that Skåne is not as flat as it appears!  

From the ridges we caught glimpses of the rolling farmscape stretching out to the horizon.  

We ended the hike in the next village over, Torna Hällestad, where we had a very cozy fika in the village café and general store.  

We also stopped in at the village's medieval church 

where murals from the 1400’s present Biblical stories within a medieval context.  Lots of armor and chain mail, and even a castle tower.  I was also amused by the almost Dr. Seuss-like trees. 

Back at the house we admired our friends’ wide-open view out over the farmscapes while puzzling.  So cozy to chat over a perfectly fall-themed puzzle!  We also biked over to another neighborhood which was celebrating Halloween a week early to take the kids trick-or-treating, a new phenomenon in Sweden.  The trip wasn’t a big success—it started pouring and the crowds of people meant that the houses ran out of candy early.  Luckily, Susanna was prepared with extra candy at home as a consolation prize for the kids who were very disappointed in their yield.  

After a relaxing morning when we finished the Grand Tetons puzzle, we headed back out for another short hike.  The hike began with a magnificent oak 

and continued into the “Troll Forest” where the beeches, which usually grow straight and tall, are instead twisted and gnarled.  This is apparently due to a genetic variation that is also present in a few other forests around Europe.  Troll-like indeed, and so beautiful!    

 

As usual, the weekend ended all too soon and it was time for us to catch our train back to Stockholm.  Thank you Susanna, Johannes, and kids for a great weekend!    
               

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2025   

Cozy Autumn on Svartlöga 

Carl and I headed out to stay with his aunt in her little cabin on the archipelago island of Svartlöga for a fall weekend.  We’ve visited many times before, but the experience is always a little different—a different angle of light, a newly discovered mushrooming spot, a new-to-us perch by the water.  Even so, some things are constant, like the cozy atmosphere at the cabin. 

Our visit this year was too late for our traditional Friday evening dinner of crawfish, but we were not disappointed because Eva found us absolutely delicious langoustines to feast on instead!  What a treat!

Having been to Svartlöga so many times, we didn’t feel a pressing need to get up early to go out and explore.  Instead, we slept in and enjoyed slow, relaxed mornings before heading out on walks.  

 Even with the late starts, we did manage to find a good amount of mushrooms 

and to spend some time sitting by the water.  

The harbor was as beautiful as ever, 

and on this visit I was struck by the weathered textures of the fishing huts.  

One of my favorite parts of a Svartlöga day is playing boulle in the garden before dinner.  Carl wins nearly every time, so it’s a big victory when Eva or I manage to score points or to, gasp, even win the game.  So much fun!  Dinner on Saturday featured some of the mushrooms that we had picked that morning.  So cozy to cook and to eat by candlelight!  

Carl worked on the ferry in both directions to enable a longer weekend out in the archipelago.  I wasn’t the one having to work on a Sunday but if you ask me, it was definitely worth it!  Having an extra day made the experience wonderfully relaxed.

We tend to have relatively good weather when we visit Svartlöga and this year was no exception.  It was quite windy, but we did have lots of lovely sunshine and were able to even lounge outside with coffee and tea in the morning and to eat lunch outside despite the October chill.  Perhaps as a sign that it was time to go home, the clouds set in by the time our ferry picked us up on Sunday.  Thank you Eva for yet another wonderful Svartlöga weekend!       

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2025   

Meeting up with a Friend in Bergen, Norway

A dear friend from grad school was going to be touring around Norway with her mom and sister, and since Stockholm is comparatively next door, Rachel invited me to join them for the Bergen part of their trip.  I hadn’t seen Rachel in about 10 years, so an in-person visit was decidedly overdue.  Coupled with the fact that Bergen has been on my travel list for a long time, the decision to fly over for a couple of days was a no-brainer.

Bergen is apparently Europe’s rainiest city with rain 2 out of 3 days every year.  We did have some rain, but we actually lucked out and half of our days were dry.  We even had some sunny moments when the city showed us its sparkly side.  

We began our time in Bergen with a walking tour which explained Bergen’s history from the Vikings to the present.  One historical fact that I latched onto was about the 1397 formation of the Kalmar Union between Denmark, Sweden, and Norway.  I’m well versed in the Swedish take on the Union, but I hadn’t really ever understood why or how it was formed.  In the mid 1300’s, the Black Death swept through Europe killing between one third and one half or two thirds of the population, depending on location.  In the already sparsely populated Scandinavian countries, the reduction in population was catastrophic and society more or less collapsed.  It is with this background that the three countries formed a union—given their weakened state, they would perhaps have a better chance of defending themselves as a united front against the expanding German kingdoms.  

Our walking tourguide pointed out that the Norwegian flag is just the Danish flag with an extra blue cross.

 

Another fun fact: traditional Norwegian folk costumes, worn at important events like weddings, cost about $4000 new.  The hefty price is not too surprising considering that they are handmade from scratch, but still, expensive!  No wonder that they are passed down through the family from generation to generation.

Bergen is on the UNESCO World Heritage list because of its Bryggen warehouse district on the harbor from the city’s time as an important Hansa League port.  This historic area is picturesque, and I especially appreciated how closely jammed in the buildings are as well as their color palate which is similar to the historic Swedish color palate and yet slightly unique, but I had been expecting a larger area of historic warehouses and that the warehouses would be right next to the water like rorbuers in Lofoten (see “Summer Vacation 2013: Kaying and Hiking in the Lofoten Islands, Norway).  It turns out that most of the warehouse district has burned down in different fires throughout the centuries, and that the land has been filled in to make a wider wharf throughout the centuries, most recently to build a road past the warehouses.  Bryggen was a touristy but interesting place to explore nonetheless.

A fun surprise for me was the picturesque, historical neighborhoods of wooden houses tumbling down Bergen’s mountainsides.  

The streets steeply navigate the terrain and houses have been built wherever possible, sometimes lining the streets, sometimes at odd angles.  Since both white and blue paint was historically an expensive commodity, many of the houses are painted white with blue doors, but some of the buildings have other hues.  Wooden trim is generally restrained and not too fanciful, but I was intrigued by the angled trim over the windows that often have decoratively punched holes, presumably for ventilation?  

These neighborhoods were an absolute delight to wander, and I reveled in how so many different typologies—houses with fenced in gardens out front, houses raised up on plinths with stairs from the street to the front door, single family houses, rowhouses, small-scaled apartment buildings—all managed to create an dynamic yet cohesive whole.

Bergen is known for its seven mountain peaks surrounding the city (although surely there are more than seven?).  We didn’t climb any peaks but took the funicular up to the top of Fløyen where we enjoyed a wide view out over the city.  Finally we had a better understanding of the city’s geography in relation to the water. 

We also trekked out to Fantoft Stave Church on the tram.  Fantoft was my first stave church, and it was fascinating!  Norway once had over a thousand of these Viking-boat inspired stave churches, but they were all small.  An ordinance in the 1800’s that at least 1/3 of a parish’s population should simultaneously be able to fit into the parish church caused countless stave churches to be razed and “modern” stone churches to be built in their place.  Today, only a handful of stave churches remain.

I’m curious why Norway stuck with its wooden church tradition for so long when Sweden, which had also started out with wooden chapels, began replacing them with stone churches in the 1100’s.  The wooden churches that do remain in Sweden are much more like the stone churches with a simple nave construction, but Norway’s stave churches are a whole other architectural phenomenon obviously inspired by Viking ships.  Many of Sweden’s churches do share the stave churches’ thick wooden shingled roofs, but otherwise it is fascinating how two very similar cultures can create so vastly different examples of the same building type.  

Fantoft was moved from its original location in the late 1800’s, and it was intentionally burned down by an arsonist in the 1990’s.  It has been painstakingly reconstructed, but the interior remains “virgin” and is not painted in Biblical scenes like the original.  We were fascinated to learn that the weather-protected areas just outside of the church existed so that lepers could hear the service without infecting the other churchgoers.  

Bergen was the seat of Norway's royal house in the middle ages, and its ancient fortress protecting the harbor entrance is still a visible presence in the cityscape today.

We were especially impressed by Håkon’s Hall, a large secular Gothic hall built in the 1200’s to house ceremonies like royal coronations and weddings.  I’m inferring here, but this must have been a symbolic assertion of royal Norwegian power above the church which was controlled by Rome.  Perhaps a very early indication of the Reformation to come?

In addition to wandering, museums, and walking tours, the four of us also spent some time taking in Bergen’s café culture and enjoying various treats (kanelsnurrer and skoleboller, yum!) and hot chocolate.  So nice to warm up, and lovely to have time to just chat.  We also enjoyed a couple of traditional dinner dishes during our stay in Bergen—unsurprisingly, lots of fish!  

I stayed in Bergen an extra day after Rachel and her family left for the next stop on their tour.  I spent the day on a fjord cruise through nearby Osterfjorden.  It’s not Norway’s most dramatic fjord, but it was still an incredible showing of nature’s power and beauty.  It made me even more eager for a fjord kayak adventure some day…    

I also stopped in at the Rasmus Meyer art museum.  The museum is known for its large collection of early Munch paintings, but I was most struck by the Romanticist fjord and glacier paintings—an obvious motif in Norway but unusual in a worldwide perspective.

Left: Johan Fredrik Eckersberg, Fra Böverdalen, 1868.  Right: Johan Christian Dahl, Nigardsbreen, 1844.

 
All of these sightseeing attractions were illuminating, interesting, and picturesque, but the real highlight of my trip was getting to know Rachel’s mom and sister and to be able to catch up with my dear friend in person.  Rachel’s mom insisted on treating me to just about everything, making me feel like one of her daughters.  It was such a special feeling to be “momed” when my own mom is so far away.  Having the opportunity to hang out with a dear friend and to get to know some of her loved ones was such a rare delight.  Thank you for the invitation to join in on your family trip and for treating me so generously!      

Bryggen, tall sailing ships, the fortress, Håkon's Hall, and the surroudning mountains are all pictured on Bergen's pretty manhole cover. 

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2025   

Hiking the Julian Alps of Slovenia

Inspired by our hiking and via ferrata adventure in the Dolomites of Italy a couple of years ago, Carl and I returned to the Dolomite mountains this year, but this time we ventured slightly more eastward and explored the Julian Alps of Slovenia.  Neither of us had been in Slovenia before so we dedicated a couple of days to seeing a couple of the country’s more well-known cities, starting with the capital Ljubljana.

Ljubljana is a lovely city.  With a population of only about 300,000, the capital is compact and livable and filled with trees, green spaces, and views of the foothills.  The entire central district is a pedestrian zone, making it an easy place to ramble.  The small river Ljubljanica winds through the city, providing a linear focal point.  The river is lined with greenery, historic buildings, and hundreds of cafés—the river acts as the city’s living room.  

The Old Town’s streets are narrow and picturesque, 

but several squares provide a sense of grandeur and pageantry.  

The castle looms above the city on a promontory above the river.  Everything about Ljubljana is charming, quaint, and easy.  

The castle now houses several museums and restaurants and is an interesting take on historic preservation.  

Layers of history - a Roman gravestone built into the mideval castle wall 

Instead of freezing time, the modern restoration has added a new layer of history to the ancient structure.  There’s still a sense of the medieval past, but the buildings have clearly been updated for modern needs.  It’s really well done.

An art gallery built under the the castle courtyard and a restaurant in one of the castle buildings

The castle of course has great views down into the city and into the countryside beyond. 

I was also intrigued by Ljubljana’s Secession architecture, which is inspired by the Viennese movement and is somewhere in the junction between Art Nouveau/Jugend and Art Deco.  So many beautiful examples, though I was most intrigued by the more colorful buildings, which seems unique to Slovenia.  

The city is also known for the early post-modernist architecture of Jože Plečnik, but while I found it interesting, I didn’t fall in love.

From Ljubljana, we took a bus to the mountain town of Kobarid.  The view from the bus of the wall of mountains that we’d soon be climbing into was quite daunting.  

In Kobarid, we spent a day whitewater canoeing the turquoise Soca River.  Here the turquoise color is not due to glaciers but is due to the white limestone particles suspended in the water, as well as the white limestone bottom.  The whitewater wasn’t crazy challenging but we are glad to have hired a guide who knows the river and who taught us a lot about whitewater canoeing technique.

We also made the short trek across the river to the popular Kozjac Waterfall which is tucked into a short slot canyon.  What a magical spot!  

Even though Kobarid is at the foot of the mountains, it is only about 350m above sea level.  On the morning when we began our hike, we took a taxi to about 600m above sea level, a slight help.  Even so, we had a LOT of elevation to gain and we spent the morning hiking steeply uphill without pause, breaking above treeline mid-morning.  Eventually we topped out on the peak of Krn, and although the early morning fog had risen, we were still in the clouds and didn’t get the wide mountain views that we had been hoping for.  

Right: view from the top of Krn into the lake valley we'd soon be hiking through

After a quick lunch, we descended back below treeline into a lake valley.  Lakes are actually quite uncommon in this karst landscape where water disappears into underground rivers and caverns.  The lakes that do exist generally don’t have outlets, and the water slowly seeps into the groundwater system.  

You are not allowed to swim in these sensitive lakes and because there’s so little groundwater to be found, you generally have to buy bottled water while hiking in the Dolomites.  Under the threat of rain, we made it to Dom pri Krnskih jezerih hut without getting very wet.  At the hut, we celebrated the beginning of our trek with a beer.  

 

We stayed in mountain huts during our trek as camping is not permitted in Triglav National Park.  The huts in Slovenia were much like the huts in Italy and seemed to be run by individual families.  Slovenian huts, however, had more private rooms, and we were so appreciative of getting some better sleep.  We only had to sleep in dormitories three out of ten nights.  

Not only did we not have to carry a tent, but we didn’t have to carry food or a stove, either, since the huts provide meals.  Breakfasts were generally muesli and yoghurt, ham and eggs, or bread with butter, jam, and chocolate spread.  Dinners were most often soups or stews—sauerkraut soup with ham, vegetable soup with ham, barley soup with ham, bean stew with ham, or a thick beef goulash with polenta.  The huts even had beer, wine, and schnaps and even hot chocolate and Turkish coffee.  Unlike Italy, no espresso machines or decaffeinated coffee, however.  Most days we ordered a sandwich to go to eat for lunch on the trail.  The meals were included with the bed but drinks were extra, and there was a clear relationship between the price of a beer and proximity to the road.

The lower elevation huts even had (expensive) showers.  We took advantage when possible, though we did have a seven-night stretch in the middle of our hike when we could only rinse off our faces.  It was bliss when we could finally shower again!   

Our second day dawned rainy, and it continued to pour all day long.  We had planned to summit a peak on the way to the next hut, but we skipped it since there were no views.  Instead, we headed straight to the Koca pod Bagatinom hut where we arrived well before lunch.  The hike was extra easy because it was mostly on old military roads from World War I—these roads make for easy walking with their relatively smooth surfaces and even gradients.  

Roads weren't the only WWI remnants we came across.  Like Italy, the Slovenian Dolomites are littered with signs of the war's bloody mountain battles.

We moved through some meadow landscapes that are likely quite beautiful, but we don’t really know since we were hiking in a cloud all day long.  Despite rain gear and backpack rain covers, all of our clothes and gear was wet when we arrived at the hut.  

Day 3 wasn’t clear, but it didn’t rain on us, either.  We hiked through the forest during the morning 

and eventually came out into an open valley which contains another seven lakes which only connect underground.  

Each lake is higher than the next, and soon we were above treeline again.  

We made it to the dramatically perched Koca na Prehodavcih hut just as it started to rain again.  

At Prehodavcih, we slept in a bunkroom with 24 beds.  It was here that Carl probably contracted a cold.  The clouds lifted a bit in the evening, giving us some views of the majestic mountains surrounding us, including Kanjavec which we would climb in a few days.     

Peak of Kanjavec, which we summited on Day 5.

We stayed at Prehodavcih two nights which allowed us to do a day hike the following day.  We retraced our steps through the valley and then climbed up onto the eastern ridge lining the valley.  

Right: View from the top of Ticarica

We followed the ridge up and down its various humps and peaks, eventually summiting the Ticarica and Zelnarica summits.  From Ticarica we had beautiful views down into the valley and across to the ridge of mountains on the other side, 

Right: peak of Ticarica

but by the time we summited Zelnarica, it had started to rain again and no views were to be had.  It continued to rain until we reached the hut again.  

Left: about to enter the fog on the way up to the peak of Zelnarica.  Right:  Looking back at the pass and to the peak of Zelnarica.

The hike included a short via ferrata section and to minimize my anxiety, Carl carried all of our gear and food for the day.  He was understandably much more exhausted by the time we got back to the hut.  Again, the clouds lifted a bit in the evening, this time giving us a short glimpse of both Planja and Triglav, peaks that we’d be climbing in a few days.  

Left: looking toward the hut we stayed at on Day 8-9 and to the Planja peak that we summited on day 9.  Right: Triglav's peak poking up above the clouds, which we summited on day 7.

 

Day 5 dawned beautiful and clear, and we left early to take advantage of as much sun and views as possible.  We climbed up to the Hribarice Pass and could see the peaks of Krn and Zelnarica that we had summited on day 1 and 4 of our hikes.  

Left: Krn peak that we summited on Day 1.  Right: the peak of Zelnarica that we summited on Day 4.

We left our packs at the pass to summit Kanjavec, a peak that we had seen from the previous Prehodavcih hut.  There was no via ferrata on the way up to the summit, but a whole lot of scrambling that made me nervous.  From the top, we had some good views, but clouds were already billowing in and blocking some peaks.  I did NOT want to have to downclimb the scary scrambling section in the rain, so we descended before finding a sunny perch for a relaxed, extended lunch break.  The sun was blocked by clouds by the time we started hiking again. 

Right: Triglav, which we summited on Day 7.

 

The glacier bowl just below Hribarice Pass is not a hanging valley in the sense that it does not have a possible stream exit—the sides of the bowl are high in every direction.  Instead, the water disappears into a sinkhole and cave system.  We noticed this phenomenon in several places throughout our trip, even spotting a cavernous sinkhole in the middle of an extremely steep scree slope.  It would definitely be bad news to accidentally fall into one of those!  Seeing a number of sinkholes made us fairly wary about stepping off the trail.  

Sinkholes!

We were also intrigued by the various forms that the Dolomite limestone can take.  Sometimes it is smooth bulbs, sometimes jagged peaks.  Sometimes the bulbs are striped by the erosion caused by small rivulets, and sometimes you can see the striped, tilted layers of sediment.  Fascinating geology!      

From the Hribarice Pass, we descended a steep scree slope before eventually ascending another, lower pass. 

It wasn’t raining yet, so we paused for a while to enjoy the view of the Koca na Dolic hut perched at the end of the world before finishing the day’s hike.

We stayed at Dolic three nights.  The next morning was foggy and rainy, and since Carl had a bad cold by this point, we went back to bed after breakfast and took a much-needed rest day.  The hut was still socked in in a white cloud when we awoke on the morning of Day 7, but the forecast was for sun so we decided to make a summit attempt of Triglav despite the fog.  

And I’m so glad that we did!  By the time we arrived at the start of the via ferrata section, the clouds were starting to break up.  And by the time we made it to the summit ridge, we had wide views in almost every direction.  

I carried my daypack to the start of the via ferrata section, at which point Carl put it into his backpack to make the ascent and descent less awkward and therefore less scary for me.  This helped me a lot to feel more secure, especially on the unprotected scrambling sections.  Thank you Carl!

At 2864m (9395 ft), Triglav is Slovenia’s highest point and is the main goal for many hikers in the park.  There are several via ferrata routes up, some of which are very difficult and two of which are relatively easy.  We went up one of the easier routes and came down the other side on the other easy route, and without really knowing what to expect, we did the route in the “right” direction for us.  There was a lot of unprotected scrambling on our way up to the peak, and that scrambling would have been pretty terrifying for me if we had had to downclimb it.  But the route that we went down was almost completely protected and had very little unprotected scrambling, which was perfect for me. 

 

For once, we were not the slowest climbers on our route up and we plodded behind some people that were a bit slower than us.  We didn’t mind the delay—it was nice not the be the stressed out, out of breath climbers holding everybody else up.  Finally, we made the summit, which we shared with about 75 or 100 other climbers—this was not a lonely wilderness experience.  There’s a small, round steel hut at the Triglav’s top which was erected in the 1800’s and that must be terribly dangerous in a lightning storm.  

On the summit of Triglav

Triglav itself was clear of clouds, and some of the ridges were mostly free of clouds.  

Left: the Kanjavec peak that we summited on Day 5.

Clouds still covered much of the view to the west, but the highest peaks were poking up through the clouds.  

From the top, it is obvious that Triglav is the highest peak for many miles—all the other peaks are noticeably considerably lower.     

Climbing Triglav is a Slovenian rite of passage and Slovenians say that anyone who summits the mountain becomes a Slovenian.  Maybe we should apply for passports!   

We had a snack and enjoyed the views from the top, but the weather was still unstable and we didn’t want to linger for too long.  By the time we started to head down the summit ridge, 

the tide of climbers had turned and more people were descending than ascending, which made our going much easier.  Still, we had to wait for a number of late climbers on their way up, making me wonder why the park doesn’t enact a one-way system which would be much more efficient and safer for all concerned.  Nonetheless, we eventually came to the lower peak of Mali Triglav before continuing on our way down down down.

 

Once we had come back down to regular, non via-ferrata trails again, we stopped for a sunny, relaxed lunch.  We were short on water, however, so we didn’t linger too long.  

Lunching and hiking with views of the Triglav peak that we had just descended.

We rounded the mountain, climbing in and out of several drainages, 

Left: view up to Hribarice Pass which we crossed over on Day 5.

before eventually making our way back to the Dolic hut where we celebrated our successful summit attempt with a spruce-flavored schnapps.  

We were incredibly lucky with the sunny window for our Triglav ascent, because the next day was rainy and foggy all day long.  Unfortunately, we had a long and tough hike to accomplish, rain or no rain.  And now I was sick, too.  First, we descended a well-built military road.  Down and down and down, zigzagging down the incredibly steep mountainside into a very dramatic valley with incredibly steep mountainside walls.  Once we had descended below the cliffs, we were able to turn up into a side valley and climb up to the Luknja Pass.  Another steep descent, and then we had a bit of trouble finding the trail that we were going to turn onto for our next ascent.  Trails in Slovenia were generally extremely well marked and signed, but not here—frustrating in the rain.  But we did find our way without toooo much ado and had lunch under the dry porch awning of a closed-up private hunting cabin as we watched the rain beat down outside.    

And then the great ascent of Dovska Pass.  It was certainly no military road leading up to the pass.  Instead, a brutal path led straight up the mountainside into the fog.  No switchbacks.  No rest for the weary.  Just up and up through the scree.  Then, when the vertical trail met an amphitheater of cliffs, scrambling up and through the rock face.  On and on, up and up.  Some via ferrata sections.  Some more scree, some more scrambling, and then finally, finally, the pass.  We were too exhausted to be elated when we reached the pass, it was still wet, and there was no view because of the clouds, so we did not linger and instead headed straight down toward the hut.  

According to a sign at the pass, the descent to the hut was only supposed to take 30 minutes.  Generally, we hiked faster than the times indicated on the signs, but we were now so exhausted that the descent took us over an hour.  We came to the trail junction where the hut was supposed to be, but there was no hut.  We got out the map to figure out where to go, and in that time, the breeze blew aside enough fog to allow us to see that the Pogacnikov dom hut was right there, maybe 30m away.  Crazy how little visibility we had.

We were extremely thankful for the hut’s huge, warm tile oven and all of the drying space above it.  We hung up all of our clothes to dry and spent the rest of the afternoon reading and journaling near the stove.  

A little before dinner, the clouds began to open up and suddenly we could see the peaks and valleys surrounding us.  We could see the Prehodavcih hut that we had stayed in and the Zelnarica peak that we had climbed several days before.  

Views to the Prehodavcih hut that we stayed in Days 3-4 and the Zelnarica peak that we summitted on Day 4.

We could see the pass we had crossed earlier in the afternoon and the Stenar peak that we hoped to climb the next day.  And we could see the long scree slope leading up to the pass that we’d be climbing on our way to the next hut.    

Right: the Sedlo Planja Pass that we climbed on Day 9 and again on Day 10. 

After so much rain and fog, it was glorious to finally be able to see the majestic mountains that we had been hiking through.  

The forecast for the next day was for sun, but when we set out toward the Stenar peak, rolls of fog and cloud were spilling over that ridge and blocking views.  We changed our plans and aimed for the Planja peak instead—being on the other side of the bowl, this peak was clear of clouds and in the sun.  We first had to climb up the dizzying scree slope to the Sedlo Planja Pass, a route that we’d be repeating the next day.  The climb up involved some scrambling that was uncomfortable for me, but nothing that felt too crazy.  There were some via ferrata sections and I was happy to have my harness on and to clip in.  At the pass, we could see down into the valley that we would be descending as well as catch glimpses of the trail that we’d be traversing the next day.

Left: view up to Sedlo Planja Pass.  Right: view down to the trail that we hiked on Day 10. 

 

The scrambling climb up from the pass to the Planja summit proved just a bit too much for me.  I was doing ok until one particularly high and exposed and unprotected scramble—I was relatively ok going up, but I knew that coming down would be terrifying.  I descended to the pass to wait and Carl summited the peak without me. 

We ate lunch at the pass and while gazing out over the incredible landscape, the clouds covering the eastern side of the bowl started to dissipate.  First, Stenar, the peak that we had originally aimed to climb, revealed itself.  Then peak after peak, ridge after ridge became visible.  Now we could see the Dolic hut that we had stayed in a couple nights before, and we could see Triglav’s peak dominating all of the other “measly” peaks around.  We could even see the Krn peak that we had summited on the first day of our hike, way off in the distance.  

Left: Pogacnikov dom in the foreground, the Dovska Pass that we had crossed on Day 8, and in the back, Triglav which we summitted on Day 7.

I was freezing from sitting up in the windy pass, so we began the long descent back to toward the cabin.  We took our time and the downclimbing wasn’t nearly as nerve-wracking as I had been expecting.    

We had seen a number of Ibex during our hike, but now we were granted a much closer look at the impressive Ibex scramblers.  We watched them just hop up a cliff face that would have been quite challenging for us humans.  

We also saw a number of cute, fluffy marmots on our trip, and heard the warning calls (“Intruders!  Intruders!”) of many more.  We saw a gang of ptarmigans high up in the passes, which made me wonder if it’s the same species as in the Swedish mountains.  

Down from the scree slope, Carl and I left the trail and found a sunny spot to enjoy the sun and the scenery.  We spent the beautiful afternoon napping, reading, chatting, drawing, and journaling.  After so much rain and fog, it was wonderful to be able to just hang out in the sun and enjoy the view.  However, on top of the cold, I was now also having stomach issues.  This meant that I was unable to eat much at any given time, and my stomach was rejecting much of what I managed to get down.  This was not helping my energy levels which remained very low for the rest of our trip.  

Day 10 was also beautifully sunny.  After a restless night spent trying not to cough in a dormitory, we left the hut early and retraced our steps back to Sedlo Planja Pass.  The going was a bit tougher with full backpacks, but I was much calmer after having tested the route the day before and knowing that the scrambling sections were doable and not toooo scary.  We took our time on the climb up but reached the sunny pass within a reasonable amount of time. 

The descent down the other side was absolutely crazy, but I am proud of myself for not totally freaking out.  I was nervous, but not debilitatingly so.  First, we traversed a narrow, extremely exposed ledge.  The drop was at least 1000m (3000 ft), so tripping and falling was just not an option.  The trail then began to zig-zag down what felt like a sheer cliff.  We then came to a relatively enclosed chute where we had to downclimb long sections of scrambles with no via ferrata protection.  This section was very tough for me, and it took us a long time to get to the bottom.  But we made it.  From there, the trail surprisingly headed significantly uphill to reach a more doable descent.  This descent down the scree was steep but felt very stable in comparison to what we had been downclimbing all morning.   

Right: tiny people on the ledge of a huge mountain show where part of the descent led

We finally descended enough that the ground wasn’t vertical anymore and where grass could grow.  We sat in the grass and in the shade and enjoyed lunch.  We could have sat and enjoyed the view for hours, but we knew that we still had a long hike ahead of us.

Being back down in more lush vegetation, we began to see more wildflowers.  September is far from peak wildflower season, so each flower was a surprise and delight.  I especially loved the fist-sized fluffy-looking bolls of thistle seeds. 

The trail traversed across a wooded mountainside and looked fairly flat on the map.  But it was far more challenging than that as it dipped in and out of steep, exposed drainage gullies.  Steep up, steep down, steep up, steep down.  All the while navigating booby traps of tree roots and rock piles that required both hands and both feet to navigate.  We did have some beautiful views back to the pass that we had just descended, and we could now see why the trail had traversed so much to the side for the descent.  Straight down from the pass was a sheer cliff of smooth limestone, too steep for even scree to accumulate.

Looking back to Sedlo Planja Pass

 

The trail continued to exhaust us, eventually ascending very steeply to a high shoulder.  We were completely drained when we reached the shoulder, but from there, though, we didn’t have more than an hour of descent and scrambling until we finally reached the Postarski Dom hut which is perched just above the road at the Vrisic Pass.  Being close to the road, the Postarski Dom hut was positively luxurious.  Hot showers!  Clean sheets!  After scrubbing the many layers of mountain grime and sunscreen off in the shower, we sat in the sun and enjoyed a celebratory beer with a view.

The last day of our hike, Day 11, dawned sunny and beautiful.  After so much rain, the Julian Alps were really sending us out with a bang!  We crossed the road and hiked up to the easy Vratica Pass.  The trail stayed high and apparently we were wandering through sheep grazing land as the path was at one point blocked by a large herd of sheep.  

We made the easy climb up to the summit of Slemenova Spica and could see down to the villages in the valley far below, and beyond a ridge of low mountains into Austria.  The wall of limestone cliff in front of us was the Italian border.

We descended a small bit to a beautiful meadow with views of the mighty Velika Dnina mountain wall and sat in the shade snacking, drawing and gazing.  The meadow buzzed with bees and the light breeze played in the trees.  The temperature in the shade was perfectly comfortable.  It was an incredibly relaxing and beautiful spot to linger, and I tried to imprint all of the sensations into my mind as a happy place to return to when sleep eludes me and I need a calming meditation.  

We had a lot of descending to do, so we eventually forced ourselves to leave our lovely meadow.  The trail was steep but never scary, and we made it down to the beech forest 

and eventually to a late lunch at the Dom v Tamarju hut without too much trouble.  Being within day hike distance of the valley, this hut is an extremely popular lunch destination, and it was crowded when we arrived.  But people soon started to leave and we scored a table with both shade and a beautiful view.  The service was very slow, but we managed to relax into the vacation vibe and enjoyed our radler and beer while gazing at the view and waiting for our food.  

Being mostly on a road-like trail through the woods, the hike down from the hut was easy and uneventful, though we did have a good view back to the top of Slemenova Spica, and lower down we moved through some scenic pastures with historic hay-drying structures.  

Left: the lower peak is Slemenova Spica which we summitted on Day 11. 

It felt a bit anticlimactic to reach the road at Ratece—after all of that hiking, all of those passes and peaks, traversing the entire range of the Julian Alps from south to north, here we were, back in civilization, waiting for a bus.  The public transportation system in Slovenia is pretty amazing and the small mountain villages get hourly bus service.  We didn’t have to wait long to hop onto a bus that would take us to Bled, tourist capital of Slovenia.

Bled, with its gorgeous turquoise lake with Slovenia’s only island, has been a pilgrimage site since time immemorial.  When Christianity dawned, the prehistoric site became a Christian pilgrimage site.  In the late 1800’s, the city became a tourist destination with its health spas.  And in the age of mass tourism and Instagram, Bled is a more popular destination than ever.  It is a truly scenic spot, but it’s also a little odd, because there is no real town here.  There’s a castle that was important in medieval times, but there doesn’t seem to ever have been much activity outside of pilgrimage and defense that resulted in some sort of community or town.  Yes, people live in Bled today, but I don’t think that there are many jobs not related to tourism.  

We knew that we’d be desperate for a washing machine, so we had booked an apartment for our stay in Bled.  The building turned out to be one of Bled’s most prominent examples of the Secession architecture which had flourished during the town’s spa days at the turn of the last century.  Not only did our room have a balcony, but we also had private access to the house’s glassed-in tower that had Bled castle and Triglav views!

We spent the next day touristing and making our way slowly around the beautiful lake on its well-touristed walking path.  We first hiked up to the castle, a climb that was surprisingly taxing considering that we had just finished traversing an entire mountain range.  The castle was scenic with beautiful views of the lake but didn’t have much else to offer than a small museum of the town’s history.  

We continued around the lake and stopped for a much needed and very refreshing dip at one of the lake’s several swimming areas.  A little bit farther, we stopped for a much-needed ice cream.  And then we stopped along a boardwalk section to draw and enjoy the view.  We were absolutely exhausted by this point—not from the day’s walk but from being sick, having stomach issues, and from the long mountain hike—but we forced ourselves to hike up a few hundred meters to Mala Osojnica, a foothill with a spectacular view of the lake and its pilgrimage island.  

It was an excruciating, hot walk to finish the circuit, but we eventually made it back to town and to our apartment where I fell into bed for a short rest before our last Slovenian supper of local specialties.

Our hike and our health issues left us utterly exhausted at the end of our trip and overshadowed the amazingness of the hike that we accomplished.  But now that we’ve had a little time to recover and reflect, I’m impressed with us!  It was quite a hike!  And while I still have a long way to go, I have grown as a scrambler and am not as debilitatingly nervous about exposure as I was when we hiked in the Italian Dolomites a few years ago.  I have stubbornly “decided” that I am not afraid of heights, and that conscious decision not to be scared anymore has made a huge difference.  I’m not completely cured, but I am not allowing the fear to incapacitate me any longer.   

Despite our complete exhaustion after the hike, our appetite for the gorgeous Dolomite scenery has not been satiated.  Perhaps we next need to explore the Austrian side of the Dolomites?   

Our flight home flew over the Julian Alps.  Left: Triglav.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2025   

Flying Boat Camping

Carl’s job is on the R&D team for flying (hydrofoiling) electric boats at Candela.  Carl’s focus is on their passenger ferry, but the company also makes smaller, private boats.  One perk of the job is getting to borrow the smaller boats after hours, and we’ve enjoyed several afternoon outings over the past couple of years.  In August, circumstances aligned to allow us to finally borrow a boat over the whole weekend.

We left town on a Friday evening and flew out into the archipelago, passing a number of beautiful houses as well as a couple of giant Finland ferries.  

We also passed through a military fort from the turn of the last century, Byviksfortet on one side of the channel and Fredriksborg on the other.

It was a beautiful evening to be out in a boat. 

Carl’s reconnaissance had found a protected bay nestled in a group of islands that would require a bit less than 50% of the boat’s battery to reach.  

The bay off of Väster-skägga’s Storön turned out to be no secret to the boating community, and there were already about 20 boats anchored in the bay or tied up to land.  Nevertheless, we found a perfect spot for our boat and tied up to a steep cliff.  

Not being practiced boat campers, it took us a while to get the boat situated, but then we settled in for a quiet evening of watching more and more boats trickle in to the bay while sipping wine, chatting, and enjoying the warm August evening.  By the time we woke up the next morning, there were about 40 boats in the bay.  

We had incredible luck with the weather over the weekend.  It was warm enough to enjoy refreshing swims, but the evenings were cool enough to sleep.  We had lots of lovely sunshine, and there were comparatively few mosquitoes.

After a lazy morning of swimming and reading, we spent Saturday exploring the island.  We walked over to the other side and enjoyed a sunny picnic lunch before completing our circumambulation, picking a few Karl Johan or porcini mushrooms along the way.  

We made our way to the island’s high point and enjoyed the watery view.

Back at the boat, we delighted in another long, relaxed evening of reading, sipping wine, eating dinner, chatting, and gazing at the water.  The boat has a small cabin under the front deck which made for a cozy and comfortable camp.  We had taken a mosquito net with us which allowed us to keep the hatches open and still sleep free of insects.  Sleeping with the water clucking against the boat was very peaceful, and though there were a number of other boats in the vicinity, we weren’t bothered by them.  Everyone was respectful of the natural surroundings and kept a pretty low profile.  

We had another leisurely morning, slept late, and lounged in the sun with books and a long, slow breakfast.  We alternated swims with lazing on the deck with books.  It was really the perfect way to spend a relaxed day.  

In the afternoon, we motored back to town.  The electric hydrofoiling boats are a pleasure to ride in.  They are so quiet that passengers can talk without having to raise their voices, even at high speeds.  Also, because they fly above the water, they don’t bounce into all the waves and wakes and provide a very smooth ride.  They don’t create much in the way of wakes, a major bonus for eroding shorelines.

On the way home, we flew a different route, this time past the Vaxholm military fortress.  The first fortress was built in the 1500’s, but the fortification that you see today is from the mid-1800’s.  Someday, we’ll actually stop for a visit, but this time we zoomed by as usual and headed straight back to the city.  

After returning the boat to Carl’s office dock, we biked home.  The weekend was a perfect and much needed lull in our otherwise crazy busy summer, and I’m hoping that we’re able to enjoy another weekend on the boat next year!     

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 05, 2025   

America Tour 2025

This year, Carl stayed home in Stockholm and worked while I visited family and friends in the US when my office was closed for summer vacation in July.  

Rochester, NY
I started my America tour in Rochester where I visited my mom and Carol and spent an afternoon with my childhood friend Elissa.  Rochester was having a hot summer, setting the tone for the rest of my US trip.  

Despite the heat, however, I did manage to get up early and run through my lovely Airbnb neighborhood my first three mornings.  

my Airbnb

During past stays in the neighborhood I have oohed and ahhed over the houses and the tree-lined streets, but this year I started noticing the garages, many of whose designs complemented their main dwellings.  After the first few days, I developed a cough and a lot of congestion (I think I may have been reacting to the mildew in my Airbnb, but I’m not really sure?) and had to quit running.  

 

Mom and I spent the week adventuring somewhere new every day.  We visited the lighthouse at Charlotte on the Lake Ontario coast.  

We got ice cream.  We sat under a magnificent oak and enjoyed the shade while at the annual Pride picnic.  

We got ice cream.  We napped on benches at a small botanical garden.  

We did our annual hike through the forest and bogs of Tinker Nature Preserve.  

We got ice cream.  We helped to celebrate a family member’s high school graduation.  Another day, we had a quieter family dinner.  We visited the Genesee Country Village & Museum, my absolute favorite museum from my childhood.  We drank iced, on-tap root beer.  And ate more ice cream!  

As a kid, visiting the Genesee Country Village Museum was always a big highlight of my visits to the Rochester area.  The museum is an extensive open-air living museum filled with historic buildings that have been moved to the site.  Little wonder that I became an architect who particularly loves historic architecture…  Like Skansen in Stockholm, the Genesee Museum is staffed by costumed interpreters who tell you about each building, usually while performing some historically accurate task like kneading dough or cobbling.  This summer one housewife was making…ice cream!  The buildings range from simple vernacular to sophisticated urban, 

cover many aspects of village life from dwellings to smithies to churches, 

and span from Western New York’s earliest frontier era to the early 20th century.

This Victorian octagonal house was the only specific building that I remembered from visiting as a teenager.

I haven’t been to the museum since I was a teenager and at this point I feel like I am now better acquainted with Swedish historical architecture than I am with American.  (One aspect of this is that there is just less diversity in Sweden’s architectural history, making it easier to get a handle on.)  I was extra fascinated to see the similarities and differences between Swedish and American buildings from the same class and era.  One similarity was covering the lower parts of walls with painted wooden boards (durable!) and painting the upper parts of the walls with stenciled patterns (expensive!).  

I fell in love with the often spacious pantry spaces (I have always coveted a butler’s pantry) which are comparable to Swedish serving rooms.  And while the colonial fireplaces have separate baking ovens like their Swedish contemporaries, the American fireplaces seem so ergonomically inferior and much less efficient than the raised Swedish counterparts which are comprised of much more heat-retaining mass.  

I was also intrigued by the painted and shellacked canvas floor coverings in several of the houses from the pre-linoleum era.  I asked about them and apparently they are quite durable, easy to clean, and reduce drafts from between the floorboards.  I am not aware of a Swedish equivalent.  I’ve been drooling over Arts & Crafts patterns for years and fell in love with some Victorian-era wallpaper.  

One sweltering afternoon, I met my friend Elissa at Black Creek Park, an extensive nature preserve where we did a long hike through the woods and fields.  It was a great walk and soooo nice to catch up on Elissa and her family’s lives since last year, but boy, was it hot!  We concluded the afternoon with a milkshake from a roadside ice cream stand.   

Indianapolis and Nashville, IN
After lots of ice cream and not enough time with family and friends, I caught a 6am flight down to Indianapolis (by way of Charlotte) to visit my grad-school friend Kelly and her wife Bethany, whom I hadn’t seen since they visited us in Stockholm several years ago.  If Rochester was hot and humid, Indy was even hotter and even more humid, making for a truly sweltering visit for someone who’s used to Stockholm weather.  

I’ve never visited Indianapolis before, so throughout the long weekend, Kelly and Bethany showed me parts of their city on several different walks.  Like any US city, downtown has its share of skyscrapers,

downtown Indy

 but Indianapolis is unique with its DC-inspired sunken mall and war memorials.  

the mall

Anchored at one end with a climbable monument and at the other end with the central library, 

the central library

the sunken mall is punctuated with several obelisks, fountains, and war memorials and is lined by government buildings ranging from Neoclassical to Brutalism in style.  I was particularly taken with the Art Deco World War Memorial 

the World War Memorial

which retains most of its original detailing, inside and out.  A beautiful (if very patriotic) example of the style.

Although the city is sited near the White River, downtown was placed at a wise distance from the flood-prone river.  A canal was dug from the river into downtown to facilitate shipborne trade, but apparently it was built too late to make much of an impact on the city’s commerce.  Today, however, it adds some relief to the urban concrete jungle.  While some projects have been built along the canal in recent years and the canal is lined with walking paths, the city has yet to fully realize the canal’s potential as there are remarkably few restaurants, bars, and cafes on the quaysides.  It is a far cry from San Antonio’s or Chicago’s riverwalk, despite having much of the same potential.  Perhaps one day!

Indy's canal

One somewhat contemporary project that piqued my interest was the conversion of the expansive central Union Station into a hotel.  Indianapolis’s origin story is as a railroad hub, and it would have been scandalous to demolish so much history.  Instead of tearing down the bridges, tracks, and platforms, refurbished Pullman cars remain on the elevated tracks and are today hotel rooms.  The platforms serve as hotel corridors with two stories of “regular” rooms on one side and the Pullman cars on the other.  What a creative way to use the space—if I’m ever back in Indy, I’d love to stay a night in a Pullman car!    

Union Station hotel

Kelly and Bethany live in the midtown Fountain Square neighborhood.  Traditionally a working-class neighborhood with small two-story Victorians and even smaller shotgun cottages, the area has been revitalized in recent decades.  Some gentrification has occurred, but it is still an economically and racially diverse neighborhood, perhaps due to the modest size of its homes.  A number of new homes have been inserted into the neighborhood fabric, and I was interested to see that the majority of them are proud to be contemporary and don’t use stylistic pastiches to try to blend in—instead it’s a matter of scale and pattern language that achieves harmony.  There are some over-scaled monstrosities, of course, but on the whole it is a very successful blend of the old and the new.  

It was so fun to finally see Kelly and Bethany’s newbuild—a lovely home with a roof terrace view of downtown, a unique but cozy layout inside, a wildflower garden out front, and an extensive vegetable garden out back.  K&B also own a few rental properties in the neighborhood including the house next door.  It wasn’t rented out for part of my visit so we got to enjoy the swimspa one afternoon.  

I also got a peak into their extensive neighborhood-based social life and enjoyed meeting several of their friends and seeing a couple of the other houses in the area.  Over the course of the weekend, we also tried several restaurants and I enjoyed every meal, but my absolute favorite dining experience was helping to make vegan mozzarella at home in K&B’s kitchen.  Paired with homemade, to-die for English muffins, tomatoes from the back yard, basil from a neighbor’s herb garden, and red wine, it was the ultimate cozy-gourmet experience.

After the weekend, we drove about an hour to the southeast Indiana hills where Kelly and Bethany have a small cottage on a small lake outside of Nashville, IN.  The area is the home of Bluegrass music, a genre that I’ve always liked but never explored.  We listened to a good bit of Bluegrass during the visit, and the country vibe was deepened with a stop at the Bear Wallow Distillery for a tasting.  I didn’t love their moonshine, hooch, or whiskeys, but I did leave with a small bottle of tasty pecan bitters.  We only stayed one night at the lake cottage, but it was enough to mellow into a country tempo.     

the hills of southeastern Indiana and K&B's small lake 

Kelly and Bethany were incredibly generous and volunteered to drive me the 90 minutes south to Louisville, the final stop of my America Tour 2025.  On the way, we stopped at Indian Caverns, one of Indiana’s many limestone caves.  I’ve been in a fair number of caves, even caves with boat rides, and while this cave had some pretty formations and a fun boat ride, too, the highlight was definitely the cave’s ice-age fossils, many coming from now-extinct species.  The ice-age fossils were definitely a new cave experience for me.    

Louisville, KY
Kelly and Bethany didn’t just deposit me in Louisville but instead spent the evening with Chad and I at Tom’s restaurant for a gourmet meal and even more gourmet drinks.  It was so fun to merge my different college and grad-school worlds and to introduce some of my favorite people to each other.  Also fun to finally try Tom’s renowned restaurant which I’ve heard so much about over the years, and the drinks certainly didn’t disappoint.  

Lots of bourbon!  5000 different kinds.

After breakfast the next morning, Kelly and Bethany headed home and I immersed myself in Chad and Tom’s Louisville life.  They bought a beautiful house in a historic neighborhood a few years ago, and it was so fun to finally see it, and to see all of the work that they have poured into the house.  I love their house and love love love their Old Louisville neighborhood which is just brimming with gorgeous, historic homes.  I was struck by how red brick was such a predominant building material, giving the area a distinctly East Coast vibe.  And while the houses do have a few feet between them, their often tall and narrow proportions jive well with East Coast townhouses.

However, Old Louisville’s planning with its “courts” and “terraces” is unique and exceptionally livable and beautiful.  

All but one of these courts are pedestrian streets with service alleys behind the houses.  They are incredibly verdant and are dotted with fountains.  The houses lining the courts are close together and range from small apartment buildings to large single-family residences representing a range of historical styles, and they have all been lovingly restored.  Although the courts are often gated or bordered by a grand archway, they are open to the public.  There’s a steady stream of pedestrians moving through the courts on their daily exercise rounds or on walks with their dogs, and there is a tight-knit sense of community along these courts.

St. James Court was first out at around 1890-1900 and is the exception to the rule as it is more of a grand residential boulevard with a green space in the middle of the street than a traditional Louisville court.  This court is lined with giant Victorian mansions.  St. James Court is famous for its fountain and because it is still lit with gas lanterns!   

St. James Court

 
Belgravia Court and Fountain Court, true Louisville-style pedestrian courts, lead off of St. James and were developed at the same time.  They also have a central green space, albeit between two narrow sidewalks, and are lush with vegetation.  These courts feature houses and apartment buildings that are slightly less grand than St. James, though they are still quite posh.  

Belgravia Court

Fountain Court

These courts were so popular and successful that developers continued to repeat the pattern throughout the neighborhood for the next 30 years or so.  Floral Terrace from about 1900-1910 also features a tight fabric of somewhat simpler Victorian houses facing out onto pedestrian walkway.  Here there is no central strip of public green space, but the front yards are deeper and densely planted.  The walkway skirts around a central fountain.  I have a hard time imagining moving back to the South again, but if I did, Floral Terrace would be my dream.  

Floral Terrace

  
Reeser and Kensington Courts were built around 1910 and feature apartment buildings.  Today, most of the greenery has been removed to rationalize maintenance of these rental buildings, a sad loss for the neighborhood and for those that live here.  Eutropia and Rose Courts were built in the 1920’s and feature small, one-story single-family cottages and are just as bereft of trees as Reeser and Kensington.

Reeser and Rose Courts

However, Ouerbacker Court which was developed around 1910-1925, features larger Arts and Crafts bungalows and is still a green oasis today.  

Ouerbacker Court

Much of Old Louisville is made up of traditional grided blocks, and the alley system is prevalent throughout.  Carriage houses off the alley didn’t just house the horses and cars, they also have traditionally housed and continue to house a population of younger and/or less wealthy residents than those that live in the main houses and are an important factor in the enduring diversity of the neighborhood.  

These blocks were mostly developed between 1880 and 1930 and feature a surprising diversity of housing stock from small wooden shotguns to large limestone and brick mansions.  

There are even a number of well-scaled apartment buildings here and there, another important factor in the neighborhood’s ongoing economic diversity.  

Styles run the Victorian gamut from Richardsonian Romanesque to Gingerbread Victorian to Queen Anne Shingle Style to Beaux Arts Classicism.   

 
Louisville is packed with other verdant, historic suburban neighborhoods and the city is punctuated with a series of Frederick Law Olmstead parks.  We also explored the scenic, rolling Cave Hill Cemetery which is the final resting place for many of the city’s prominent citizens from that era.  

Cave Hill Cemetery

Interestingly, though, suburban neighborhoods which are today predominantly rental properties have lost their greenery—like Reeser and Kensington Courts, absentee landlords much prefer drab but easier-to-maintain yards that are free of trees, bushes, or other plantings.  Sad for both the residents and for the city as a whole.        

Some areas of downtown Louisville are hopping, but like so many American cities, there is a dead donut ring separating the city center from the historical suburbs.  Today, this ring is a zone of vast parking lots, low-income housing projects, highway interchanges, vacant buildings, and very little greenery.  There are interesting plans afoot to better connect the city together across this dead zone, I hope that it is successful!  

Downtown Louisville

On a walking tour of Old Louisville, our tour guide told us that Louisville’s wealth historically came from gambling (horse racing), smoking (tobacco), and drinking (bourbon).  On a previous visit I have experienced the gambling and horse racing from the Kentucky Derby’s infield, and I’m never going to be interested in tobacco, but I do love whiskey so I was excited to deepen my bourbon knowledge.  Tom, who works in the bourbon industry, led Chad and I on a personalized tour though bourbon country.  Our first stop was for a tasting at Buffalo Trace, one of the only distilleries to survive Prohibition (bourbon was doled out by medical prescription).  After a tasting I couldn’t resist bringing home a bottle of Blanton’s.

Buffalo Trace

Next stop was Castle & Key, a new brand in a historic distillery.  According to Tom, the bourbon is still too young to stand on its own, so we skipped the tasting and went straight for the cocktails.  Given the day’s extreme heat and humidity, the bourbon slushy concoctions went down just right.  We strolled the gardens, admired the creek and wished we could hop in, enjoyed gourmet grilled cheese food-truck sandwiches for lunch, and sipped our cocktails.  A beautiful oasis to hang out. 

Castle & Key

Our day culminated with a tour and tasting at Whiskey Thief, a very small but well-respected distillery.  There are no fancy, air-conditioned buildings here—just a couple of simple barn-like sheds and porta-potties out back.  Whiskey Thief’s entire inventory fits into one rickhouse for aging, and the distillery consists of only one still.  Their bourbon is not distributed and is only sold on-site.  

the entire supply of Whiskey Thief

Tastings are straight out of the barrel, and the bar(rel) tenders use a copper whiskey thief to draw up and serve the bourbon and rye.  If you like the product enough to buy an expensive half bottle, you get to fill your bottle straight from the barrel using the same whiskey thief.  It’s quite an experience and of course I couldn’t resist! 

My visit coincided with Tom’s birthday, so I was able to join in on his traditional birthday river trip with a group of about 15 friends in kayaks down Indiana’s Blue River.  The River is an extremely chill experience, no rapids to speak of, and we spent the day just floating, chatting, swimming, drinking bourbon, snacking, and watching the beautiful scenery go by.  Despite its name, the river is quite green, and this section is lined by thick deciduous forest.  It was like floating through a cathedral of green, a very peaceful experience.  There were a good number of others out floating on the river, but it was nothing like tubing a Texan river and was quite serene despite the others intruding on our “wilderness.”

Louisville’s origin story is due to the Falls of the Ohio River—it was here that goods were offloaded from one boat, carried up or down the falls, and then re-loaded onto another boat, long before the lock system made such efforts redundant.  

the falls are now harnessed to create electricity

The river is a threatening presence to the city and still catastrophically floods from time to time.  For this reason, there is very little development along the riverbanks, but in recent years, the city has developed a long waterside park system.  The park system on the Kentucky side of the river connects to a similar park system on the Indiana side of the river with a railroad-turned-pedestrian bridge.  About a mile long, walking this bridge gives you a good sense of just how huge and powerful the river is, even during normal flow.  In our case, there was ice cream waiting on the Indiana side before we turned around and walked back to Kentucky.    

If Rochester was hot and humid and Indiana was hotter and more humid, Louisville was downright demonic.  It was 95-96 degrees F (35 degrees C) and 85-100% humidity every day.  It was ridiculous.  After being outside for an hour, even without doing much, I could literally wring the sweat out of my underwear.  And yet, despite the heat, we ventured down into the fossil beds on the Indiana side of the river one day.  The exposed limestone here is just covered in fossils of all sizes and shapes, a true marvel.  However, it was too hot to linger for long and we just about gave ourselves and the dog heat stroke during our short visit.  On our way out we saw a sign that the fossil beds tend to be 10-20 degrees hotter than the ambient temperature—no wonder we were so boiling down there! 

fossil beds

I had such fun getting to know more of Louisville and the surrounding areas, but the best part of my visit was just getting to hang out with Chad and Tom and with Chad’s family.  People I love but haven’t seen for years.  But alas, after nearly three weeks of travel, it was time to return to Stockholm.  Despite having such wonderful visits with family and friends, I missed Carl and our cat and our home.  Many thanks to Mom, Carol, Elissa, Sally, Phyllis, Kelly, Bethany, Chad, Tom, Nancy, and Christy for the visit and for your wonderful hospitality—I loved seeing all of you!  

MONDAY, AUGUST 25, 2025   

Graduation Climbing at Ågelsjön

Carl is a rock climber, and his niece, who lives in California, also climbs.  Over the years, Carl has taken Kajsa (and her rock-climbing father) on day trips to various Stockholm cliffs during their yearly summer visits.  But this year, Kajsa graduated from high school which clearly called for more than just a day trip of climbing.  Ågelsjön, about two hours south of Stockholm, is a well-known climbing destination that we had never been to before, making it a perfect graduation gift climbing trip.  Emma, my sister-in-law, and I followed along for the fun of it. 

We were incredibly lucky with the weather over the weekend and enjoyed warm weather and sunny skies both days.  Upon arriving at the nature reserve, we hoisted our packs and walked about a kilometer from the car to a perfect lakeside tent site in the shade of a giant oak tree, passing several climbing cliffs along the way.  A number of groups were already on the rock, and we quickly set up our tents to claim our camping spot before heading to the nearest cliff.  

Many of the routes on the cliff were quite difficult, but a few of them were within reach for our group.  Carl and Kajsa climbed various routes, and Emma and I even made it most of the way up one easier route.  For me, the climbing was extra difficult without climbing shoes, but it was a fun experience to give it a try none-the-less.  We had a relaxed lunch and then continued climbing and chatting.  With each successful climb, Kajsa received several clues to a complex puzzle that Carl and I (well, mostly Carl) had created for her.

When Carl’s and Kajsa’s arms were aching, we headed back to camp for a swim.  Kajsa worked on her puzzle and eventually managed to solve it, which resulted in a symbolic graduation present and bubbly.  We enjoyed dinner and dessert and eventually crashed into our tents.  

The next morning also dawned sunny, beautiful, and warm.  After breakfast, we packed up camp and then traipsed to another, more out-of-the-way cliff in the nature reserve.  This one proved to be quite challenging and took a number of tries for both Carl and Kajsa.  Emma and I sat up above the crevice that they were climbing out of and chatted and photographed their progress and generally enjoyed the view and the gorgeous day.

 

All too soon it was time to pack up the climbing gear and head back to Stockholm.  It was a short but very fun and successful weekend trip! 

      

MONDAY, AUGUST 18, 2025   

Kayaking the Gryt and the St. Anna Archipelagos with Friends

Due to scheduling conflicts, we went on our annual kayaking trip with our friends Patrik and Ulrika much earlier in the year than usual.  Because the water would be colder making potential accidents more serious, we chose to head a bit south to the Gryt and St. Anna archipelagos instead of kayaking in the Stockholm Archipelago.  Not only is the weather (and hopefully the water) generally a bit warmer 2.5 hours south of the city, but these archipelagos do not require any long, exposed crossings to get out to the outer islands, further reducing the risk.  Carl and I have paddled through the St. Anna Archipelago during the summer of 2020 (see "Kayaking the Sankta Anna Archipelago" https://walkingstockholm.blogspot.com/p/travels-continued-13.html), but Gryt was new to us.

Our paddle journey started in Gryt with some rain but by the time we reached the sandy beach and parklike forest where we’d camp for the night, the precipitation had abated.  

We enjoyed a fantastic evening on the cliffs overlooking the water.  One advantage of paddling so early in the year was that we didn’t have to stay up till midnight in order to see the sunset.  

 

We woke up to warm, clear sunshine and set off after a leisurely breakfast.  We wound our way northward through the middle of the relatively undeveloped Gryt Archipelago and paddled though the winding “canal” through the idyllic roadless village of Harstena, admiring the scenic boathouses and speculating about what a summer house in the village might cost.  

The somewhat open crossing from Gryt was without incident, and soon we were paddling through the smaller islands of the St. Anna Archipelago.  It was a tranquil day of paddling.

Throughout the journey, we paddled at a good tempo but paused often to just look and enjoy the scenery, and we enjoyed relaxed fika breaks 

Fika stop.  Ulrika's photo

and lunch stops on various islands.  

Lunch break.  Ulrika's photo.

We even swam during a couple lunch breaks, and sometimes we snoozed in the sun on the waterside rocks.  The clucking water lulled us to sleep.    

Ulrika's photo

We didn't see a ton of wildflowers on this trip but we were fascinated on several stops by the swirly granite.

 

Even though we were only a couple of hours south of Stockholm, these islands featured an almost entirely different ecology.  There were still pines and spruce, but here deciduous trees were not the exception but the rule.  Sunlit ancient, gnarled oaks by the water makes for a special kind of beautiful. 

The sunny weather and clear water also allowed for beautiful views down into the seaweed clinging to the underwater cliffs, and sometimes we would just hover above the billowing seaweed, rising and falling with the swells as we watched it hypnotically sway from side to side.  

Ulrika's beautiful photo

We took turns making gourmet meals and washing dishes.  Each meal was better than the last!

Ulrika's photos.

 

We stopped for the night on a low island out near the outer edge of the archipelago and set up camp on granite shelves overlooking the water.  During the tent-raising process, we first heard some bleating and then saw that the island was not as deserted as we had thought—a herd of about 20 sheep occupied the island.  

They were curious about us but willing to share their island, so we kept on setting up camp.  

We crossed the island to find a sunset view out of the wind and spent a long, lovely evening enjoying yet another fabulous feast, sipping wine, chatting, and admiring the view.  Bliss!

Day three dawned chilly, windy, and wet, though we were lucky enough to eat breakfast and break camp before the rain really set in.  We paddled through the rain and wound around a number of more inland islands.  

My favorite place was a very long, very narrow bay that was lined by ancient oaks and pines.  The bay was mostly wind still, and the birdsong was just magnificent: we were treated to a 360 degree stereo concert.  We lingered and just listened.  This was another advantage of kayaking so early in the season—by midsummer, many of the birds have moved on and/or fallen silent.

The rain stopped in time for lunch and upon landing on shore, we all stripped off our wet clothes, hung them in the trees to dry, and put on several layers of warm, dry clothes.  It was so cozy to finally be warm and dry!  During lunch, the sun started peeking out through the clouds and by the end of our after-lunch naps, we were bathed in sunshine once again.    

After lunch, we headed back out to the outer islands and started to look for a new home for the evening.  It was quite windy, so we had hopes of finding a wind-sheltered spot to hang out in for the evening, but alas, with wind from the west, it was nearly impossible to find a spot with both lee and sunset views.  We settled for an island with a high, bulby peak.  Patrik and Ulrika found a fairly protected spot near the water, but Carl and I decided to brave the wind and tented toward the top of the bulb.  

We spent another marvelous evening near our high tent, enjoying the views, each other’s company, and the dinner and wine.

Skål!  Cheers!

We had more fine weather on day 4 and spent a large part of the day weaving through the outermost islands of the archipelago looking for seals.  

 We didn’t see any seals, but we did enjoy the open water views.

Another of Ulrika's beautiful photos.

After a sunny but windy fika break at the edge 

and then a sunny but windy lunch, we started paddling more seriously back south and crossed back into the Gryt Archipelago. 

We were aiming for a particularly promising-looking island for camp, but it turned out that that island was a bird sanctuary that hadn’t been marked on our map, so we couldn’t stop there.  We paddled around and looked for a good campsite for a while, and being the last night of the trip, we didn’t want to compromise.  Finally, we found the perfect westward-facing granite ledges!  The ledges were high above the water, however, so we needed to find somewhere to beach our kayaks.  We managed to pull up at the head of a somewhat nearby bay, but the landing was anything but easy or smooth, and it was a long and fairly arduous trip between the kayaks and our camp.  But the incredible campsite was worth the struggle and effort, and we enjoyed a magical evening up on those shelves of rock

In the background is the bay where we pulled up the kayaks.

Always after dramatic tenting scenery, Carl and I set up our tent on the wind-blasted and sloping promontory.  We needed a lot of large rocks to anchor the tent, but it held, if barely.  

We spent the evening relaxing on a more sheltered shelf, and here the sun was blazing.  We enjoyed one last evening of conversation, good food, and good wine.  After yet another gorgeous sunset, we headed to bed. 

Our last morning was hazy as we paddled back out to the outer edge of the archipelago.  The water was mostly still, a magical experience where sky and water merged into one molten soup.

We paddled out to Stångskär to visit the historic lighthouse from 1863.  This lighthouse replaced an earlier lighthouse, and before the that, the island was marked by a large mound of stones which had been a navigation landmark since at least the 1600’s. 

In addition to the lighthouse, the island was also a ship pilot station from 1697-1968.  Sweden’s east coast is incredible challenging to navigate because it is riddled with hundreds of thousands of islands and maybe an even greater numbers of deceptively shallow channels.  Shipwrecks were commonplace, and knowledge of how to safely weave through the islands to the harbors was practically a state secret.  Since 1667, all ships in the Swedish archipelagos have been required to hire an official pilot to safely navigate from the open Baltic waters, through the archipelagos, and to the mainland harbors, and Stångskär was one place where an official pilot could be hired.  This practice continues to this day, but fast motorboats mean that the pilots no longer need to hang out in the outer archipelago.  Instead, they boat out and meet incoming ships as needed.

We pulled our boats up into the bay and crossed the island to the lighthouse to take a look.  We hadn’t been expecting to be able to go inside, but we were in luck and our visit just happened to coincide with the caretaker’s rounds.  For a tiny donation to the lighthouse fund, he guided us up the winding stair, 

into the glass room at the top where we got an up-close look at the glass prisim surrounding the light bulb,

and out onto the surrounding platform.  The platform’s purpose was originally to wash the glass, but today it makes for a fantastic viewpoint. 

Our guide was born on the island and still lives full-time there—both very rare occurrences in the modern era.  He comes from a long line of ship pilots and was himself a pilot based on the island until the pilot station closed.  It was an incredible opportunity to meet and talk with a true local, especially one who was so generous with his time, with his stories, and with our questions.  We were up in the lighthouse for over an hour learning about its and the island’s history and enjoying the views.

The lighthouse is still in operation, but more for nostalgic reasons than practical ones at this point.  It is in need of a very expensive paint job, which the government doesn’t seem keen to fund, so we hope that the non-profit manages to raise the necessary funds before the rust sets in too deep.      

After lunch on Stångskär, we got back into our kayaks and battled the wind and waves as we paddled inland.  We stopped for one last fika break on a sunny, wind-shaded island, then continued the tough battle against the wind, hiding behind islands and enjoying the lee for as long as possible before having to go out into the last open crossing which tossed and pitched our kayaks every which way.  Eventually we made it back to our starting point and the lovely long weekend drew to a close.  Many, many thanks and hugs to Patrik and Ulrika for the ride, for your company, for your tasty culinary contributions, and for making this journey magical and memorable.  And thank you for your gorgeous photos, too!  Until next time!

       

TUESDAY, AUGUST 12, 2025   

Archipelago Weekend on Fjärdlång 

The beginning of May saw us heading to Fjärdlång out in the Stockholm archipelago for a weekend camping trip.  The new-to-us ferry route featured several narrow passages 

and a number of swoon-worthy houses.  

A few hours after leaving town, we were the only passengers left on the boat to get off at the last stop at the island of Fjärdlång.

 
We walked out to the island’s southern point to set up camp.  It was too windy to tent out on the exposed cliffs, but we found a sheltered spot in the trees just a few feet from the water and managed to raise the tent just before it started to rain.  

The island’s hostel in the historic Thielska Villa (same Thielska family that built the eponymous gallery on Djurgården in Stockholm) is closed while negotiations for a new owner are underway, and we seemed to be the only overnight guests on the entire island.  We did see one group of day visitors on Saturday, but we otherwise had the entire island to ourselves.

Thielska Villan

Saturday dawned cool and windy but sunny.  After a relaxing breakfast overlooking the water, 

we set out on the island’s stage of the new Stockholm Archipelago Trail.  We traversed granite bulbs, wandered through the forest, 

marched along the island’s gravel roads, and crossed pastures.  

We enjoyed intermittent water views and had lunch on a wind-protected promontory on the water’s edge.  We climbed to the island’s “peak” at Tysta Klint.  It was a beautiful walk, and even though we spent the entire day hiking, we weren’t able to cover all of the island’s trails.     

View from Tysta Klint

 
We picked some skvattram which is known in English as marsh Labrador tea, northern Labrador tea, marsh rosemary, or wild rosemary.  We hang small bunches of this plant in our closets to keep the moths away and it was time to replace last year’s supply.  

We also picked some harsyra or wood sorrel to make harsyra gin and tonics once we got back home.  We discovered that too much wood sorrel is overpoweringly bitter, so it is best used in moderation.

There’s a small cottage on the island that you can rent by the week through Skärgårdsstiftelsen, but even this was uninhabited during our stay.  We explored the cottage’s pretty pasture and dreamed of a longer summer stay on the island one day.

Skärgårdsstiftelsen's cabin

 
After a quick, chilly bath, we spent a relaxing evening on a waterside rock reading, chatting, drawing, dining, and sipping wine.  Clouds rolled in to block the sunset, but we did get some beautiful purple sunset glow.

 
We spent Sunday morning hanging out on the cliffs above the water before heading to the lunchtime ferry back to the city.  I had been hoping for a warmer weekend for hanging out on the cliffs, but alas, we had to make do with the chilly, windy weather.  Nevertheless, we had fun and managed to find some lee for mealtimes, and it always does my soul a world of good to be out in the archipelago.  

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