New York 2013

At the end of June, we spent four days in New York City on our way to Texas.  We had a really nice hotel, the Conrad, in the lower west section of Manhattan.  Since we did a lot of tourist things on our last trip, this one was mostly about eating good food and walking around the city.

When we arrived in New York, Max said, “It smells like Texas but it’s not as hot.”

Leo was confused by the large plastic rocks for kids to play on in the parks.  I guess not everyone can have giant ice age boulders like they do around Sweden.

Frankfurt

We spent the day in Frankfurt yesterday.  It was allright, but perhaps I would have liked the city more if I had not been awake for over a day.  Also, it’s a hub city.  Put some signs around town to tell us where things are, Germans!  Couldn’t find the Main river.  Oh well.

Temperature was HOT.  30 c (90f).  We went to a kids’ museum, ate frankfurters (what else?) and walked around until we couldn’t stay awake anymore and headed back to the airport.  I sacrificed a really nice skirt and shirt, plus a scarf to the people of Frankfurt when it was so hot that I accidently left them on a bench.  Enjoy.

 

Midsommar 2013

Yesterday we celebrated Midsommar in Katarina’s garden.  The weather was perfect so we grilled and ate strawberry cheesecake to celebrate the longest day of the year!

Grand Hotel Saltsjöbaden

For Måns’ big birthday gift this year, I took him on an overnight stay at the Grand Hotel Saltsjöbaden.  The weather was nice so we managed to have a picnic by the sea for dinner. It was a wonderful weekend!

Lake Como

We are back from 8 days on Lake Como in Italy.  Wow!  We understand why Clooney has a house there.  The views are amazing!  We had a whole floor of a house to ourselves above the town of Menaggio with a beautiful balcony overlooking the ferries travelling to Bellagio and Varenna.  We spent our time overeating and reading, while the boys looked for lizards and bugs outside.

We visited a lot of little towns on the lake.  Pizza seems to be the main dish unless you want seafood.  Of course we stuffed ourselves with ice cream every day.  It’s going to be salads for a week now that we are home.

We hopped over to Switzerland for a day, not realizing that it was a holiday and all shops were closed.  The restaurants were open but it turned out that all we could afford was Burger King.  They even charged extra money if you wanted a ketchup packet.  I had to tell the kids, “Sorry kids, we can’t afford ketchup.”  Must be a valuble commodity over there.

We were able to visit SwissMiniatur which is a little place with all of Switzerland done in miniature (you could have guessed that from the name).  I spent a lot of time filming the lizards climbing over cars and houses.  Dragon movie coming soon.

I think the pictures tell the rest of the story:

Easter 2013

We’ve been having a very nice Easter weekend.  On Thursday, the kids decided that instead of witches, they would dress as an Easter bunny and an Easter egg for school and trick or treating in the evening.  They made great cards to trade for candy and came home with about 8 pieces of candy, a bag of chips and 40 kr.

On Easter Saturday, the boys hunted for their eggs by looking for clues around the house.  Later that afternoon we dyed Easter eggs and then went to Katarina’s for a wonderful Easter dinner of lamb, potatoes, salad and green beans (finished with a rhubarb pie)!