Blinded by the light

That's how it feels here in Scandinavia in the days just before and after midsummer. I forget how light it gets. It's virtually daylight when you go to bed and if you happen to have to get up to go to the loo in the early morning the sun is up and it is broad daylight. I feel like I haven't slept for weeks. I catch little naps in the car when we have to go somewhere. I shouldn't complain though, because right now we are having nice sunny days (very chilly evenings and nights, though.)

Hubby is on a working holiday. I had always wanted to raise the sink since it was about 10 cm lower than everything else, and it was killing my back. I foolishly thought it was just a matter of changing the sink, and that would be it. But no, instead we now have a whole lower part of an IKEA kitchen with all new elements, and some new plumbing.  Next year we might have the top.

I am delighted but it is a bit hard cooking for five with no workspace but it can be done, mainly outside. The five people I am talking about are my mother, my nephew who is on holiday, our daughter who lives in Africa normally and of course the two us. As of Monday our youngest daughter will be here too, from Chile.

Other than that, nothing new, other than that we had our 36th wedding anniversary. We went to Mollösunds Värdshus and had a very nice seafood dinner, all locally fished. There was just a little "B moll" as the French say and it was the problem with ordering dessert.

We had ordered à la carte and as far as I could tell so had most of the people there. When it came time to order dessert, we wanted creme brulé, but it was only included in the set menu. We asked if we could have it anyway and of course pay the full price. The waitress then launched into a lengthy explanation of why we couldn't have it.

She took an example with buying things at IKEA. If there was a table with four chairs, we couldn't just buy one chair!? Ok, we thought, but the similarity stopped there.  No one, as far as we could tell had ordered the menu, with creme brulé as the dessert, we had all ordered à la carte. So what were they going to do with all these left-over servings of creme brulé?

We ended up having no dessert, since there was nothing else that took our fancy, and I heard from another table that they felt the same way. So I think what happened was that they missed out on selling at least four desserts at full price. (And I hope they end up with a bunch of creme brulé, out of date, in a few days that they can't serve up.)

Just wanted you to see my pride and joy.

 

Just a photo from the Mad Hatter's Tea Party. Actually it was only oldest daughter cleaning out some of her old clothes and hats.

More in a few weeks. Have a very nice summer if you are in Europe,  otherwise just do your best.

...and here we go again...

This is my second attempt to write something, so this time it will be short and to the point. I had a long story with many photos already prepared but forgot to save it and somehow it all disappeared, I am soo mad!!!! But not so mad that I don't want to fill you in on our latest adventures.

We have now arrived at our little cottage on Orust and the drive through Germany went okay even though it was very long so we allowed ourselves two wonderful stops at nice hotels off the beaten track on the way.

First stop in Wolfenweiler? On the wall behind me it said
that it was first founded in 1508, wow!

You know how it is when you travel and it gets to be the
witching hour and you have not booked a place to stay.
It gets a bit nerve-wracking and that is how it was for us.
Suddenly we saw this welcoming sight in the historic town
of Hann. Münden, and they had a room, and we could have
dinner even though it was a bit late. It was magic! Even
though we were a bit intimidated by the waitress who was a
Goth. When we asked her "Do you have a wine list?" meaning
"Can we see your wine list?", she said yes, and didn't get us
the wine list because clearly we had not asked her to do that.
We gave her a good tip out of fear!

The flight from Australia was okay too but it is very long and we didn't have any stop-over. Instead we had eight long hours in Dubai to walk around and try to find a place to lie down. They are so mean, every seat has armrests preventing you from being able to sleep. However, this man, at the tourist office,  was nice and friendly.

We spent a couple of days in Grenoble and caught up with some friends, but not all of course. The weather was very nice and as we were staying with our neighbors we were able to profit from their pool which was great.

The house in the background is our house.

Breakfast in the sun with C and J, thanks to hubby's new
selfie-stick, or should I say, selfish-stick.

Dinner at Cafe Forté, in Grenoble, with friends.

Saturday was booked for having our evening with our dear neighbours and it was an evening to remember. It was all the good nibbles for aperitifs, which we love and seafood and fish for mains and cheese from our neighbour's special cage. We don't quite know how old it was but it was hard to take it for cheese.

It's very unfortunate that none of our many many photos taken that night came out in a way that could possibly be used here. For everybody's sake I am refraining from using them. Selfie sticks can be dangerous when used under the influence and under tables!

We left Grenoble on a Monday morning via Pontcharra to see our friends out there as well and then it was off for the long drive mentioned above. included the 18 km traffic jam that took a few hours.

Today will be very busy finishing the kitchen cupboards before picking up my mother so she can stay with us for a while out here. It has been beautiful weather up to now but today is raining, typical.

This turned out a bit longer than I expected and I still didn't tell you everything. Take care now and have a nice summer!

Vegemite chocolate

Yes, it's true, Cadbury has come out with a new flavor. Unfortunately each shop only received a limited amount so when I went back to get more to bring to friends in Europe they were all gone, everywhere. If you like Vegemite, like me, having it as a filling in chocolate can only be good, but for people with mixed feelings about Vegemite it might not be a success.

Only one more sleep before we go to Europe. Concerning packing, I found this little drawing that describes my last days very well.

I just hope that we don't have any problems with borrelia this time. It's a variation of Lyme disease, and since we have a lot of deer on the island and some get up very close to the house (vide infra), we have to be careful. You get it from ticks that are borne by deer.

Oh dear, ticked off again! A photo from our kitchen.

Remember that I said I was going into Sydney last week to have a look at Vivid Sydney, the yearly light festival. Well, that didn't happen but hubby took some visitors there and they liked it a lot.

I can't stay with you any longer, bags have to be packed, so, so long, next time from Europe!

Thanks for reading!