Where's Woodcock?: Sweden

We went on deck to watch our arrival in Stockholm and it was fairly misty. Again no passport control so straight off and a short walk to a public bus to take us into the city. Trouble on the bus - I used my card and asked for 2 tickets but you can only buy 1 ticket per card! So Martin had to fish for his wallet to get his card for his ticket - daft. We had breakfast in the only place that was open - McDonalds unfortunately and then sat in the station waiting for our car rental pick up time.

More technology with trying to access the car park and the car keys. My plan had been to see the biggest Dalarna horse but there was a road diversion. We did stop in Falun and went to the museum to learn about the history and the culture of the area and saw the smallest horse. Martin was very tired from the long drive in the rain but we were pleased with our little cottage with a lovely view over a lake and a nice garden which was visited by a deer on our first afternoon. We had a good 10 hours sleep!

We walked into Rattvik, passing a horse cart racing track, bought a coffee and sat by the lake. We had noticed that the Finns didn't acknowledge us never mind say hello, Here in Sweden they say Hei Hei. In the afternoon we popped to a famous local ceramics factory but it wasn't up to much.

We moved on to Sunne stopping at the Dalarna factory.

On the drive we saw a very large moose by the side of the road, other than that it was 3 hours of flat road, trees and lakes. Our B&B was a lovely old house along a river - the hosts were away for the first night and we were looked after by their young lodger. We walked around the town but the next day we had a good hike up a hill to a lovely pond where we had our lunch then back along the river into town. The hosts, Magda and Erik returned and we had a long chat with them over breakfast the next morning before we left for our next stop.

Another long drive to a cabin next to the owners house who were away. We walked down to a peninsula then came back to sit on the deck in the sun.

We got up early the next morning to return the car in Stockholm. Despite Monday traffic we got it back by 9.30 and were pleasantly surprised that our hotel room for that night was available for us to check in. We walked for miles around the city then to a food court for dinner.