Rest of Stockholm Round Up

So as it's almost time for our next trip away I thought I should finish up talking about our trip to Stockholm. 

The main event i.e. reason for going to Stockholm in March was the OH's desire to see Parsifal on stage. Apparently it's not done very often. To which my response is, well thank goodness for that because wild horses could not drag me to another performance of it. The Stockholm one was, as always, beautifully played and very well sung, but Act 1 has more not-quite-endings than Peter Jackson's Return of the King and  I was just bored stiff all the way through.That said, apart from a few niggles with the production the OH really enjoyed it so that was the main thing.  

It was destined to be an unhappy evening for me all round  because after the opera we went for dinner to what was until then our favourite restaurant in Stockholm, an Italian/Swedish place that we have previously always gone to when in the city.  Never again. We were the only customers, we felt distinctly uncomfortable and there's nothing says that you're unwelcome so much as the waiter approaching you during your main course and asking if you're going to want a dessert because if so they can prepare them now so they are ready as soon as you've finished the main.  And then they will be able to close the restaurant. Since this wasn't much after nine and they are supposed to be open until eleven I wasn't impressed. 

Other than that the only other thing we did that I haven't mentioned so far was to visit the toy museum which was surprisingly underwhelming considering how much I normally enjoy a good toy museum. I wasn't however feeling at my sparkling best that morning so perhaps my view was a trifle jaundiced. 

You will see from the photograph that I continue to come upon weird and wonderful statues wherever I go. I used to think it was only in cities where I went to conferences, but it seems that's just not the case! 

We have not booked another trip to Stockholm for the foreseeable future but I suspect it is only a matter of time. Meanwhile, roll on the Loire Valley next week although I'll be here a couple of times again before we go. 

Adopting Scandi Style

Well not really. It's just that when we go to Nordic countries we're always taken with the fact that they  have either cut flowers or flowering plants somewhere in the room. And they look lovely. 

Now my views on houseplants will be well known to long time readers here, as will the fact that I tend to think that cut flowers are all very well but a nuisance once they're over and you have to faff about getting then  out of manky water (assuming you've remembered to keep  the water topped up) and then washing the vase. 

But we were in the supermarket yesterday and the bunches of tulips  caught my eye and voila

I couldn't resist and they give a spring like touch to the hall windowsill. We pass this a gazillion times a day, which I reckon means at least half a gazillion smiles brought  to my face every day. . 

An American in Paris

Generic photo of Sacre Coeur there, from my trip last spring. Best I could do. 

So there's currently a series of filmed musicals doing the rounds of British cinemas; Kinky Boots (really not our thing), Titanic (someone thought it was a good idea to make a musical about the Titanic?), 42nd Street (also so not our thing for different reasons) and An American in Paris. We have been bombarded with trailers for these every time we've been to the cinema since Christmas and I wouldn't have taken a lot of notice except that I've never seen the original film of An American in Paris and the dancing in the trailer looked wonderful. So I suggested we go, and we did. 

Musicals are a bit weird aren't they? I've been struggling over the last few days to try and put my finger on exactly why I should think musicals are weird but accept opera at face value and I finally did. It's because  the dialogue in musicals is so stilted. It's there to carry on the plot and tee the audience up for the next big song, but it conveys only information and not emotion. In this a musical is different from a play, where the dialogue does both jobs, and opera where the music does both jobs, or at least the words and music  are so closely aligned that you can't tell where one ends and the other begins.  Musicals break that old adage of writing, 'don't tell, show' because in a musical the dialogue is all about the telling. 

That said, and leaving aside such minor details as my inability to understand what on earth the three leading men saw in the leading lady, a simpering cipher with, in this case, a mouthful of teeth and a bit of an edge to her vocal tone, and the way the actor who was called upon to be New York Jewish just couldn't do the accent, and the constant self preening of the man who was Henri who spent most of the time looking at the audience rather than his co-performers, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it because the dancing was indeed wonderful and a joy to watch. It made me smile and really, that's a good thing in itself. 

 

Some recent reading

 

No I haven't gulped all of these down in the six days since I ditched the poster; only one of them, and the other two were finished before that. 

I've not previously been a fan of Karin Slaughter who I find a bit on the gruesome side and who writes a lot about violence perpetrated on women by men. This one came via a friend and I wasn't sure if I had read it before. By the time I was far enough in to realise I hadn't, I was hooked on the story. Slaughter writes well, has plausible plots and believable characters, although she has created, in one of her minor recurring characters, one of the most irritating female cops in the annals of crime fiction. But if you can get past the gory bits, worth a go and  I shall now be looking out for more of her books.

I documented my surprise a while back  at how much I had enjoyed  the Val MacDiarmid  Carol Jordan/Tony Hill books also given to me by a friend and took the opportunity when down in Glasgow recently to buy the next one in the series. Well up to scratch and with a shocking twist at the end. I don't know where she went from there but I'll be getting hold of the next one to find out as soon as I can. 

I approached the Clytemnestra with some trepidation, on the once bitten twice shy principle.  The bad news is that Casati is no Madeline Miller or Natalie Haynes, lacking the lyrical prose skills of the first and the sardonic edge of the other. The good news is that thankfully she's no Clare Heywood or Jennifer Saint either and the book was very enjoyable. Clytemnestra was never cuddly in this book; well, she was brought up in Sparta after all, but Casati is excellent at showing how little by little all the softer feelings she does have are stamped out of her as she experiences betrayal after betrayal by various members of her family. Mostly the men, but her alcoholic mother is complicit in a lot of it, and her brat  of a little sister is as infuriating as she is in every other book I've read that she appears in. When (spoiler) she finally murders her unspeakable husband the reader is cheering her on. 

I also read the first book in my complete Susan Cooper The Dark is Rising volume. It was written for a much younger audience than me and read a bit like Enid Blyton on steroids in places, but I'm looking forward to getting around to the next one which was aimed at older readers.

Finally the book that broke me as far as the poster went was Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie. This had all the things I normally look for in a book; a wide cast of differentiated and credible characters, a plot (somewhat scattered, but still recognisably linear!), some interesting ideas behind its construction and subject matter, and excellent writing. It was to all intents and purposes a Good Book, I could see why it won the Booker, I understand why people hailed Rushdie as a brilliant prospect when it was first published and - it bored me to tears. I didn't want to finish it, and I didn't. I put it in the charity shop box at the same time as I put the poster in the bin. I think I'm done with 'improving reading' at least for a while. I'm going to wallow in detective, fantasy and historical fiction for the foreseeable. As the late great Barry Norman probably used to say 'And why not?'

The Thiel Gallery

It always amazes me that, despite the number of times we have been to Stockholm, we still find things of interest that we've never been to before.This time we had a lovely day at the Thiel gallery, a place of whose very existence we had lived in ignorance until  recently. 

Basically it's a large house that used to belong to a wealthy industrialist who also collected art. In the way these things often go he made a lot of money quite fast and lost most of it even faster, but not before he had built  a beautiful Art Nouveau house in one of the wealthiest parts of Stockholm, and bought  a lot of pictures. These were all - house and pictures - acquired by the state in the mid 1920s and the house, complete with furniture and pictures, was subsequently opened to the public. 

We went on the ferry which is always a fun way to travel around the city and then walked up (very much up!) to the house. The house itself is beautiful and the art is stupendous. Thiel collected mainly Nordic Art although there's a second division Gauguin and a not very good Toulouse Lautrec in there as well. But it is the pictures by  Munch, Zorn, Jansson and, above all for us, Carl  Larsson that were in some cases a revelation and in others just an unmitigated delight. I have to say the Larsson collection at the Thiel is infinitely superior to that which is on display at the National Gallery. The NG may of course have a number of Larsson's that aren't hung but the Thiel has a room full of them and they are all lovely. 

There is a shop (see previous post re shopping for the poster and jigsaw puzzle) and a beautiful cafe overseen by a star Swedish chef (although obviously not in person.) It was just an amazing day and one we plan to repeat next time we're in the city. Meanwhile I learned two things; that I really like big landscapes and that no-one can paint snow like a Scandinavian. 

A selection of photos below 

 art nouveau embroidered piano cover - isn't it gorgeous?

dessert in the cafe. I didn't take  a picture of the meatballs we had for our main course. Look at that glorious tray with a design from one of the gallery's pictures on it. 

cafe windowsill and view 

And some of the paintings 

these four were all monumental in size and just breathtaking. The bottom one is rather chillingly called Sacrificial Grove. The two pics below are of some of the Larssons. 

 It was a fabulous day out and I hope we can repeat it. 

More Happy Mail

Yes, the club yarns from Erin at Henny Penny Makes have arrived. 

First up is the  Little Grey Cells club,  themed around Agatha Christie's Poirot books. The first quarter is The Mysterious Affair at Styles. 

I have been waiting for several weeks for the designer to release the blanket pattern I wanted to use these club yarns in, and the yarn arrived yesterday and the pattern was released today so that was good timing. 

Then there is the minis club, this year themed around the Colours of the Seashore. 

L to R  March, February January - because I hadn't realised I should have rotated the photo before I uploaded it to the blog. These will also be going into  a blanket but I haven't bought that pattern for that one yet. 

 

So the arrival of those has derailed the de-stash numbers a bit! but hopefully by the end of the month that will have sorted itself out. I'm in the  middle of a fun colourwork destash project just now, but I might just make a start on the Little Grey Cells blanket this week because it's basically garter stitch and will make a nice rest from the vagaries of the colourwork now and again. 

The Books to Read Poster ...

 ...has been binned. 

This is what it looked like before it took the one way trip to the recycling bin. A little over half way 'done.'

I could have scraped the silver off all the little pictures before I threw it away just to see what they looked like but I couldn't be bothered. I'm not going to read them, so I can probably live without seeing the (sometimes wildly unrelated) illustrations. 

It's a bit of a relief actually. 

Things we did manage to buy in Stockholm

there's not a lot because we are past the stage of needing a souvenir of the city itself. We did however go to a new(to us) Art Gallery, of which more another day, and there I bought a new jigsaw puzzle 

and a poster 

A poster is a stupid thing to buy to bring back from holiday really unless the place you buy it from offers it in a protective cardboard tube which this one didn't. The girl behind the till overheard me saying to the OH how much I liked it - they had half a dozen or so of previous special exhibitions up on the wall and said 'We have that for sale in that basket over there' so I sort of felt obliged to buy one since I had just been saying how much I loved it, without really thinking through the practicalities. Anyway we stuffed it with socks and got it back unscathed. It's now on the back of my study door and it looks really good. 

Over in Gamla Stan (The Old Town) there is a Sci-Fi bookshop, although calling it a sci-fi bookshop is a bit like describing  an eight course banquet as a nice meal. It's amazing. It does sell sci-fi books but it sells an awful lot of other fantasy/sci-fi related stuff. We'd been past it before but never gone in; this time we thought we'd give it a go and see if we could find a nice present for Son no 2., which we did. We spent ages in the shop and I saw three things I really wanted and bought two of them. Which is good going for me. The one I didn't buy was the follow up book to Godkiller, which a couple of months ago I was lamenting in this very place  would not be out in paperback until next January. Well it transpired that it in some places it must be out a lot sooner than that, since it was sitting on the shelves of this shop in Stockholm. Possibly it was an LFP (large format paperback) if they still do those. I planned to buy it since I was keen to read it but then on the upper level (yes, there's a lower level, a mezzanine and an upper level, the place is huge)  I saw this

and I just had to have it. I'd already seen some stationery I wanted - that looked like this - 

and as I couldn't justify buying two books and some writing paper on a whim all for myself - which I recognise is irrational and foolish, but it's how I am - I decided against buying the Godkiller follow up and settled for the stationery and the LotR knitting book. 

I know the stationery is designed with the tastes of adolescent Japanese girls in mind but I liked it and  I'm learning to accept that sometimes I just like 'cute stuff' and to go with the flow. The pattern book is amazing. Often when you buy a book full of patterns you only really like maybe 4 or 5 of them and I didn't look all the way through this one before I bought  it, because really what LotR fan who is also a knitter doesn't want to knit something called 'Second Breakfast Mittens' as featured on the front cover here and isn't too bothered about the rest? However almost all of the patterns in the book, of which there are 27, spoke to me in a good way. I won't be kitting a Gollum toy, or a dwarf helmet any time soon but many of the rest may eventually turn up here.  

Not exactly fork handles

more your actual three. That will only mean anything in conjunction with the photo  if you're a certain age and acquainted with the work of British comedian Ronnie Barker. 

But yes,  I got the candle making kit out again. I made  a big one in a tin for us and then two smaller ones for a swap. The swap theme is recycling so I've recycled two of the small jars from the Bonne Maman advent. I think they look quite cute. 

They're lavender scented candles. Not one of my favourite scents but it was one that came in the kit along with the purple dye and my swap partner does like lavender so it seems an apt choice. Being still at the learning stage I think that this time I have overdone, rather than underdone the dye, and possibly underdone the scent. It's really difficult to tell with the smell but fingers crossed there will be a vague scent of lavender when they are lit. 

Talking of the Bonne Maman advent I never really reviewed it once it was finished. I enjoyed having it, but I wouldn't buy it again because a lot of the jams tasted very similar and most of them were too sweet, even for me. And I have a famously sweet tooth.  That said there was a cinnamon caramel spread in there and if they sold that in big jars I would buy it all the time because it was gorgeous. 

In other, totally unrelated news, I was at the dentist this morning to have a filling repaired. Much to my amazement it was painless. Apart from the bill of course. 

Latest Jigsaw

I got this at Christmas and it took me a while to pluck up the courage to give it a go. I daresay it's obvious why. It's not quite the double sided plate of baked beans puzzle that makes me wonder why on earth anyone would want to do it, but the limited colour palette and the fact that all the pieces were the same shape did make it harder than some others I have done.  It was a challenge but mostly I enjoyed doing it. It's called The Real Women of Greek Myths and I was rather startled by the eclectic nature of their clothing, some of which is very 'not ancient Greek'. There was a poster inside identifying all the characters with a brief description by the inimitable Natalie Haynes.  Not quite how I envisaged some of them, but that just made it more interesting really. 

Next up, when I can bring myself to disassemble this one, will be something rather more traditional. 

A new family saying.

I find that once the children have grown up you don't tend to develop new family sayings even though you cling to the ones that came with their toddlerhood; why else would we describe duvets as 'squilts' or quietly shriek 'new shoes, new shoes' when we buy - well yes, a new pair of shoes. Although that's not one that gets used that often in our house to be honest. 

But we did develop a new one in Stockholm this trip  so now if you go somewhere expecting to be able to buy something there, only to find that it is out of stock or not stocked at all any more, this is described by us as  a 'Vasa Museet Hoodie Situation.

Many years ago on a trip to Stockholm the OH treated himself to a Vasa Hoodie in the Vasa Museum shop. He loved it, he's worn it a lot, it needs replaced really, as it's at the stage of being OK to wear around the house/get in the coal and not really OK to be seen anywhere else. We zapped over on the ferry to the Vasa Museum in December to  buy him  a new one, only to find that the only ones they had in stock were Adult Small, which were no good at all. We reasoned that the stocks were low because it wasn't tourist season and that they would be stocking up again ready for summer 2024 in due course and so when we ere there in March we zapped over yet again, only to discover that the whole hoodie/t-shirt wall had shrunk and there was, if anything, even less stock than there had been in December. We have reluctantly concluded that hoodies may not be the way the Powers That Be see the Museum Shop moving forward, which is a shame. Although as I pointed out, I did buy him a very funny hoodie from Very British Problems for his birthday so its not as though he is hoodie-less. 

Also while we were  there in December we made our first trip to the refurbished National Gallery where I saw a beautiful book about European Portraiture through the Ages. It was quite large and quite heavy and we didn't have an awful lot of room in the suitcases as we had taken thick warm clothing and since we were coming back in March I said, 'I'll check on Amazon and see if I can get that at home, and if not I will get in March when we come for Parsifal. It was not visible on Amazon and so, dear reader, one morning on our recent trip we sailed into the National Museum Shop, walked to their book shelves to pull out  a copy of the book, and they didn't have  one. They had about six  last December plus two copies in their Old Library but even those, when we checked, were gone. A lesson learned I thought, although to be be honest it probably hasn't been . Not 100% anyway. I say this because yesterday in Tesco I saw some little cream jugs with some cream and  lemon artificial flowers in them; they were so pretty and not expensive and I thought they would go on the windowsill in the hall. 'If you like- get' said the OH, but a little voice in my head said 'you might like it, but you don't need it, do you?' and so I put it back and said I would think about it. I suspect the next time I am in Tesco they will all be gone. But there again, since I don't need it, I won't miss it, will I? 

So there you have it - A Vasa Museet Hoodie Situation. You have the money and the will to spend it; they no longer have the stock. 

To add insult to injury, we had planned to assuage our disappointment by having coffee and cake in the Vasa Museum's cafe, but whether temporarily or permanently this could only be accessed via the Museum itself. It's a lovely museum, don't think it's not, but I've done it twice and I didn't feel the need to do it again. 

But it wasn't all loss. We decamped to The Viking Museum whose cafe and shop you are very welcome to access without paying to enter the museum. we ordered hot chocolate and I kid you not it was the best hot chocolate I have ever had. In my life. Not discounting the one we had in the famous cafe in Vienna.

Mine was the brownie, the chocolate coconut thing was the OH's and the cookie was on the house because the girl behind the counter thought we had waited too long for her to bring the hot chocolate due to two demanding Americans who wanted one espresso and two glasses of hot water between them.  It wasn't a problem really, we didn't care,  but she insisted. We wrapped it up and took it away for later. Like the things we had actually ordered, it was delicious. 

Happy Mail

Happy mail can really only mean one thing, can't it? The yarn has started arriving. 

Today was the Yarn  and Book Club Spring Quarter from Beehive Yarns. I doubt I would have ordered this had it not been for the fact that the book was Anne of Green Gables, a perennial favourite. So the idea is you get some yarn themed around the book, a nice copy of the book itself and some little extras. 

Here it all is

The book and a book mark, some tea and some chocolate (white chocolate with raspberries - yum!) two flowery stickers, two daisy shaped needle stoppers, a small project bag, a pin that says 'Kindred Spirits', a wooden needle gauge marked with US and MM needle sizes plus 15cms and 6 inches. And of course the yarn which is gorgeous. Beth at beehive Yarns has a great eye for my sort of colour.

I did haver about buying it originally but I'm so glad I did. Apart from anything else I had a miserable morning being quite poorly so as you can imagine this cheered me up no end. (Except for the thought that this month that is yarn in and so far there is no yarn out. But we're only at 5th of the month and there are two projects very near to completion, so that should start righting itself very soon. 

and yes there will be more about Stockholm soon. 

Firth park 2.0; February and March.

 Looks like I forgot to do  a post about the Firth Park photograph project up in February, so we'll play catch up this month and hope to do better in future. 

February

and then March, which we did last Friday

It was a lovely day weather wise, as was the rest of the Easter weekend; sadly we are back to cold winds and grey skies now. There were so many beautiful pictures from Firth Park to choose from, even though when we first glanced up the path it didn't look as though it was going to be very inspiring. It shows the importance of really looking I suppose. 

In other news, a final word on the velvetiser. We are so very pleased that we bought it. It makes a lovely drink with a beautiful texture and no lumps and no watery taste which can so often be the case with hot chocolate made at home (in our experience. Other people might be total magicians with it.) That said our preference is for making it with chocolate powder from  a jar rather than the expensive chocolate flakes recommended and sold by Hotel Chocolat. So a definite thumbs up from us. 

An Important Date

for the OH in the Orkney calendar. Yesterday saw the re-opening of Geri's Ice Cream parlour for the season. Of course we went; we never miss opening day if we're actually here on Orkney. Here's the photographic evidence.

The cone is mine; I can't really face the big sundae type things anymore except on very special occasions. It is a double scoop though; one of toffee fudge and one of vanilla honeycomb. The vile looking green sauce on the OH's concoction may give away that it is Chocolate Mint. 

Before going to Geri's, we went to the cinema to see Dune 2. It's something over two years since we saw Dune, which was enjoyable in a crash bang wallop sort of a way although a lot of the time I couldn't tell who was who. Dune 2 was much better, as it wasn't so dark and as I more or less remembered who the main characters were and where they were placed in the plot I could sit back and let it wash over me. It's all bit fantasy cliche but the script was more or less OK, the acting was fine and the cinematography was lush. In a development which took us both by surprise I did actually enjoy this one more then the OH did. Who could have known?

Wool Stats and Completed Projects for March.

 I was rather afraid that the stash reduction for this month was going to be very small indeed but in the end the numbers were more pleasing than anticipated. Yarn in was 200g which I claimed in a swap and for which I have a project in mind, and no wool in my stash that was suitable. Yarn out was 1265 g; almost half of that was sold and the rest was a mix of being knitted up or given away  Net reduction for the month then was 1065g and the cumulative reduction for the year to date is 3429g. 

(Things may not be quite so good in April as I have two lots of club yarn arriving, which I opted to receive on a quarterly basis, thus saving myself some postage but it does mean that there will be a lot arriving all at once. Ah well, c'est la vie. )

Meanwhile here are the completed projects for March. 

Birthday socks for my brother-in-law. He is a train geek, and in fact has just become an assistant editor at Railway Modeller magazine, as well as being the voluntary editor for the magazine of the Ffestiniog Railway Society, so a real enthusiast. So when I saw this mini-skein set dyed in the colours of some of the most famous locomotives from the old pre-British Rail days I had to buy it and make him some socks. Because I only had 20g of each colour I did actually have to sit down and do maths for this one! and I also knitted them two at a time so that I could be sure I had enough wool for the coloured stripes and that they were even. The dark grey is called Engine Oil, and the colours belong  to the Duchess of Hamilton (maroon), the Flying Scotsman (green) , Mallard (blue) and Rocket (yellow). Mini skein set by Quack Yarn. He loved them. 

 

Owl themed fingerless mitts that I made for a round robin type of thing. It's a big circle and you get sent something, take inspiration from it and make or buy or rootle out  something to send on to the next person round. I got a lovely fabric box with appliqued owl and fox, so I made these out of some fox coloured wool I had (coincidentally from Box 2 - very helpful) and with owl cables. 

These are socks for the OH that I made from the wool I got in a January swap, so not out of the box but good to get it used up. These were far from being a favourite project as the wool was harsh and they just seemed to take ages and ages to knit. Also about 3/4 of the way through the ball, the micro stripe turned into a much fuller stripe but there was nothing I could do as it didn't turn back! So the foot you can't see in the picture is finished with about four quite wide stripes. It looks odd and I was quite disheartened, also it niggles me, but he doesn't  care. so that's alright really then. 

This is the big project I worked on without managing to complete in February; The Impressionist Shawl by Helen Stewart. I wanted this finished for May when we are off to the Loire Valley and starting off with a visit to Monet's house and garden at Giverny. I thought it would be a fitting thing to wear there. The lace is much easier than it looks (it must be otherwise I couldn't have done it) but even knowing that I am really pleased with this. 

I'm not even going to pretend that I made these 'spa cloths' for any reason other than to do a quick knit and get this year used up. My current swap theme is Earth/Eco Day, and these are made in some hemp yarn that someone gifted to me. I was pleased to find an appropriate use for it. 

Box 2 is still looking relatively and worryingly full, but there's another four weeks so if I work hard....

And finally the token 'not knitting' project; a card I made last week which I am also quite pleased with. Simple but effective.  

S.O.S. -No, not a cry for help

 not in this instance anyway. 

SOS stands for several things but here it stands for the Scottish Owl Sanctuary. We've been talking vaguely about visiting this 'one day', without the day ever having arrived before. However, due to the vagaries of the weather and possible ferry disruption we ended up with a spare day in Glasgow before setting off for Stockholm so the 'one day' arrived. We gave Son No 2 a lift into work, thereby making him late for the first and probably last time. Honestly he gets there early every other day and has to take two trains and then walk; you would think that the one time he got a lift in a car he could do at least as well. What can I tell you? Glasgow commuter traffic. 

We went straight on to the Sanctuary after dropping him as we couldn't face trawling back through the commuter traffic in the opposite direction to the flat only to go out again half an hour later, but this meant that we arrived rather more than an hour before the place opened. Luckily the cafe was open so we spent some time in there.

I risked a scone, and it was fine. Baked on the premises fresh every morning apparently.

And then we went and looked at owls. I do love an owl, so I took lots and lots and lots of pictures, some better than others. Here are a few of the best ones. 

Eurasian Eagle Owl. Shame it shows the cage wires; the OH's phone camera is fancy and somehow gets rid of those. 

This is a burrowing owl. Judging by its performance the day we went, it spends large portions of its life standing on one leg. Well, why not? 

This one couldn't be bothered to pose so I couldn't be bothered to remember what sort of owl it was. A 'Whatever' Shrugging Owl, perhaps?

My favourite - the snowy owl. 

A Very Cross Owl

And a Very Fluffy Owl (also possibly quite cross)

The SOS has the largest collection of owls on show in the world, and they are from every corner of the earth, from deserts to rainforests . They do flight demonstrations twice a day and we were lucky enough to catch one; even more luckily one of the owls used was the female snowy owl. They get really close up to you so you get a very good look and the talk by the handler was informative and funny without being too much. We had a really lovely time. So glad we finally made it. 

Where We Stay In Stockholm

 We always stay in the same hotel when we go to Stockholm. It's on a small island called Skeppsholm; Stockholm is built on a series of islands so that's no big deal. There's a bridge to one part of the city centre, and ferries to other parts of Stockholm so getting around is easy and it's  very close to the National Gallery, so it's almost ideal for us. The only slight inconvenience is that there aren't many restaurants or cafes nearby which make eating out in the evening quite tricky sometimes although we did sample the inhouse restaurant on this occasion and wouldn't be averse to eating there again. 

Anyway it struck me that although I have put up some pictures of notable features on the island I haven't ever just posted pictures of the immediate environment, which is worth doing. Almost all of the architecture  dates back to the 17th Century and a lot of the buildings were used originally by the military, especially the navy as the island 'guards' one of the sea entrances to the city. Most of them have been converted to civilian use these days as museums, offices or indeed 'our' hotel. 

So here you go

Above and below views of 'Fantastic Paradise' an installation which has moving parts powered by water in the summer and is affiliated in some way to the Modern Art Museum just behind it.  Despite some scarily sharp edges on the metal parts Swedes seem perfectly happy to let  their children run about, play and climb on these structures when they are working; mine would never have been let near most of it! and I can't see anything 'paradisal' about it either. Now if they had called it 'A Nightmare of Paradise...' My ignorance showing here I'm sure.  

And of course the now standard photograph of the beautifully calm dining room and one of my breakfast choices. Incomprehensibly, there is no cinnamon bun on that plate...