Malmö

After a week's work back in Sweden, I started my summer holiday.  It is in the law that no company can deny an employee from taking up to 4 consecutive weeks vacation in June or July.  Most everyone has holiday during that time and a lot of it is for the entire month of July.  Since I had time to take, and no one was at work, I decided to take two weeks.  To kick off the summer holiday, we met a colleague of mine, Linda, who lives in Malmö for a tour.  We had been to Malmö a few times, but there's always more to learn when you have a native for a tour guide.  We met Linda at Starbucks at the train station, I believe there are only 2 Starbucks in Sweden, one here, and one in the Stockholm airport.  We started by taking the #3 city bus, which makes a loop around the outside of the city.  The first place we got off the bus was at this skate park, which also has some climbing rocks.

All of this area used to be under water.  There was a company here, who worked on ships, and they had a dock near here.  Most all of this next section of pictures was once under water, and not that long ago either.

The most prominent cityscape feature of Malmö is the turning torso.  It can be seen from miles away thanks to its height and Skåne's flat terrain.  The architect was imitating the torso of a man from the hips to the shoulders, as the body was twisted.

It really is a very interesting and unique building, but it seems to have just been randomly plopped in this area.  The first few floors are offices and the rest are apartments.  You aren't allowed to go inside the building unless you live in it, and none of the windows open, which is extremely rare here.  Everyone believes in the importance of lots of fresh air.

Continuing on with our walk toward the coast, we passed through an area of apartments surrounded by canals.  All this too, was under water.

Chris couldn't resist snapping a pic of this hippie family.  Just goes to show, there are hippies everywhere.

There is a beautiful water feature that runs like a river through this section out toward the sea.

This is the Øresund.  It is the stretch of water between Denmark and Sweden.  The larger bodies of water that create it are the North and Baltic Seas. The bridge that connect the two countries is a very recognizable structure from the west coast of Sweden.  It's too far to make out in this picture, but you can certainly see it in person.

There are 3 permanent houseboats in one of the canals.  They are covered in windows and this is a very busy part of the city.  I suppose it would be much like living in a zoo, where everyone could watch.

Apparently there was a famous soccer player that recently lived here.  This house is extremely close to the beach, in fact it is in the first row of houses up from the beach.  When the soccer player bought this house, he went to the owner, who did not have the house up for sale, and offered him a ridiculous amount of money.  The owner said, absolute!

We got on and off the #3 and made our way around to a few more areas of interest in town.

Remember this picture from our interview visit?

It was so cold when we took that picture we could only stay outside for just a few minutes.  The tour guide cut the tour short because she said it was too cold to be walking around.  This was the low point in the visit and we thought we'd never be able to survive here.  Look at us now!

A few squares away from the coast is this gem.

There is an excellent selection of hot sauces and jello.  They have marshmallows and Crisco vegetable shortening.  I wouldn't say it has a lot of "unique to the states" things, but there are definitely things in there we were happy to find like Tennessee Sunshine and Root Beer!

A big thanks to Linda for such an awesome afternoon!

Last day in Scotland

The last day was again a beautiful, warm, sunny day.  I attended the morning talks, then decided to call it a conference and enjoy the last day.  In an earlier post I had mentioned Arthur's seat.  We decided we wanted to hike up it.  On the way to the site, Chris asked me what I knew about it.  I proceeded to tell him the father of geology story and talk about volcanoes and rock patterns and such.  With a decided scowl he said, "So that was the nerdy stuff, do you know the interesting part?"  Turns out it is the fabled location of Camelot. That sounds intriguing.  We had watched a number of people walking up this path when we were at the Dynamic Earth reception across the road from here.  So at least we had an idea about where to start.

We started down there by the cars.

Holyrood Park was a 650 acre private park walled off by King James V in the 16th century.  The name "rood" means cross.  King David had been hunting in the 12th century and was thrown from his horse when he saw a white stag appear with a glowing cross between his antlers.  Apparently this was where he saw the white stag.

Here's a tribute to the "nerdy" part.

Once we moved past Holyrood Park and Hutton's Section, we saw another summit that had people on top and decided to press on to higher grounds! The path looked really steep, but seemed to be easy enough to climb as there were lots of people going up and down.

As we got closer, we saw that steps of sorts had been laid into the hill.  That was a big relief.

In the middle of this picture, near the top where it curves out, that's the top of the rock sections where we took the previous pictures with the rock sections at our back.

For perspective, we are about a mile from the castle.  There it is in my hand.

Then we decided to climb the next big hill. There is a marker behind us saying this is the highest point in Edinburgh.

After we rested our legs a bit from the climbing, we headed back down.  Oh yeah, we also got to see smoke from the cannon and hear the blast.  At 1:00 everyday except Sunday, a cannon is fired from the castle.  It was the first day we heard it.

These are the steep steps we climbed.

It was a perfect last day in Scotland.  We rewarded ourselves with dinner and a ghost tour around town.  We ate here, just outside the castle.  The food was delish!

appetizer

Caesar salad with anchovies

lamb stovie

seafood stovie

 The ghost tour took us all around the city to underground vaults and cemeteries.  Our guide was really good and we enjoyed his story telling.

Here's the last bit of Harry Potter trivia.  The cafe we ate in earlier in the week was next to a cemetery.  The story goes that Rowlings would walk through the cemetery to get names for her characters.  She didn't always spell them the same and sometimes she would use the first name of one person and the last of another.  This tombstone was the big find.  For those of you who don't know, Tom Riddle was the main bad guy, and this was where she got his name.

The people in Scotland were so friendly and the country so beautiful.  I'm sure it also added to our experience that we could read and understand the language ;)