Long Way Round Europe 2010 from Passenger's seat

Tallin was very hospitable with pretty weather. We could walk among medieval buildings.







All historic buildings were exactly labeled and described:

You could read name of the building, its number, description and history in Estonian and English. There was even sometimes phone number to information about it!

Whole promotion of the city was kept in medieval style:










Doesn’t it look like everyday life in Middle Ages?

Up to the sky!








Typical round towers of Tallin:

One more typical picture. Linen ladies!

And finally incredible market square with wonderful town hall:











Are these buildings real?

Time to leave Baltic countries. This night we spent on a ferry.


(our on the right)

The ferry was huge. With restaurants, bars, two-level night club, casino, disco and big self-service store! We spent some time listening to karaoke and watching show in the club and went to sleep.

Time

We had problems with time. And I don’t mean now that we had only 10 days for all the trip
When we came to Vilnius, we looked suspiciously on clocks; something was wrong... It turned out that in Lithuania is different time, one hour later than in Poland, so – like in Greece. We lost one hour of holidays!
Later we were wondering if in Latvia and Estonia is the same..?
Going to Scandinavia we could expect change of time again. But is it for sure??
The ferry was coming to Sweden in the morning. I woke up anxious. Do I have to hurry up or still have a lot of time?? Fortunately they knew that people can be confused. I heard from a speaker: “Good morning! It’s 8 am in Sweden, we will be in Stockholm at ...” Good
To help passengers () they had special clocks on a ferry, with proper flags on theirs hands.

And we are in Scandinavia!
As you can see from first Swedish red house which I saw already in a port



Yes, it’s Sweden for sure!

yellow-blue


and red

We settled on a camping in Stockholm, in a small, but nice house in Swedish style:



No more tent after Riga!

Actually in the camping there were only houses to rent or caravans. Nothing strange... We have seen a place for tents:

Behind a hill and a forest we found metro station. After a battle for a ticket (with a guy in a ticket office and with a ticket machine) we went to the city.
We started visiting Stockholm from Gamla Stan – Old Town. To be honest, it didn’t make so big impression, especially after Old Town in Tallin. Big buildings, roads under repair and of course... rain again...



I liked colours

Old Town – it didn’t change much from the beginning!

Among tourists you could see one of the symbols of Sweden – famous Dalarna horses.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalecarlian_horse

wow!!!

thumbs up!

When we were already there, we paid a visit to Royal Family.
Unfortunately they were not at home









View from king’s balkony. Here must go parades.

As all royal palaces also this one was of course guarded.
Or rather – they tried to make such impression
Guards looked so bored and so not-willing-to-stand-there! They looked rather like tourists who had to stand there as a punishment for taking photos in interiors of palace!

Next attraction was on the other island of Stockholm, Djurgården, so we went there by boat.



As you can see, in the centre of Stockholm there are also big ferries for international cruises:

Djurgården welcomes with screams from big amusement park

Passenger wrote:As all royal palaces also this one was of course guarded.
as a punishment for taking photos in interiors of palace!

I have no idea what you mean....



(PS. Wonderful...)

Second number 1 of our travel! Skansen (heritage park)!
It is huge area with buildings and all surroundings as it was in Sweden years and centuries ago.

Whole city...



















villages...


(modern Stockholm and traditional granary of Sami)

farms...



I felt like in Bullerbyn!

In Skansen live also animals that you can find in Sweden.
I wanted to see reindeers. They were already going to sleep.



But goats were not sleepy yet. And they liked patting




“Don’t go!”

There were also our lovely horses!



It was really big. And slippery. Nikos had to throw me on the top
But there was also another one for little girls

It was dark when we left Skansen.
No, actually not dark... Very colourful:





Skansen left so big impression on me, that after coming back home I went to library and borrowed Astrid Lindgren’s “Madicken”

We ended the day in amusement park, but only watching happy (and noisy) crowd.







Next morning going to the south of Sweden...

Photos from the road

My special job on the travel was taking photos from the bike – road, what we pass etc.







Nikos was giving me signs when I should take a photo.


(but here I was faster!)

Sometimes I was going with camera all the time in my hand.

After I made a movie from Øresundsbron bridge, I had on a camera whole cemetery of insects!

I checked also that you can take a good photo up to 100 km/h. When you go 120-140 km/h you can get special effects!

We were going on the south passing successive köpings: Nyköping, Norrköping, Linköping, Jönköping...

Houses were not much different from these in Skansen...

After night in ghost hostel in Kristianstad we came to Denmark through impressive bridge-tunnel Øresundsbron.

Copenhagen

Bicycles, bicycles, bicycles everywhere!