Sunrise: 4:56
11th of August – Hanna’s birthday. Hanna was already the last days hardly waiting for this day. I woke up by the geese loudly telling what a beautiful day is waiting for us and collecting for their flight south. I prepared breakfast and because it is Hanna’s birthday, I prepared ham and eggs, we had fresh rolls (bought the day before as we were parking somewhere near the end of the world, but they were still nicely fresh). Then I woke children with our favorite musical “Der kleine Tag”. We had breakfast, Hanna got her present, being surprised that we even managed to pack it into a wrapping. In winter she should not be cold in this jacket.
Then we drove back to Stockholm, because we decided to spend still some hours in the town. In the national park we saw uncounted many deer, but again no moose, we are slowly suspecting that they do not exist at all and the signs everywhere are just a way of making tourists happy.
Coming to Stockholm we first met with a colleague of my husband. We went to a nice outdoor café, sat there and drank a hot chocolate and ate Swedish cimetbuns. They we really delicious, especially those with almond. We had a nice talk sitting in the sun and enjoyed watching the little children that were playing around us.
Then we went further. We had planned to visit the Museum of Natural History but unfortunately, they had limited tickets because of Covid, and we would have had to order tickets more than a week before (what we of course did not do, because we are planning our tour from day to day).
That’s why we decided to visit Skansen. This is an Open-air museum in Stockholm, there is shown how life was in the last 200 years. They also have a small zoo showing the animals that live or lived in Sweden. And now we can say, moose exist (at least two), it was written that they smell people very good and because Sweden is a huge country they hide from people. I just do not understand why then, there has to be a sign every 5 km warning before them. However, it is at least cute and you do not forget that you are in Sweden. By the way coming more south there are no such signs anymore, but just warning signs that there is crossing deer.
We spent several hours in this park, seeing wolves, seals, bears, otters, owls, wolverines and many other animals. We saw a lot of houses that showed how people lived many years ago. People dressed in old fashioned clothes to make it look authentic. Against the evening we had enough and started driving again. We wanted to go for some kilometers south and leave the town. We stopped near a lake (again). There we had dinner. Hanna wished to have “Poletne pene”, food she always enjoys in our favorite pizzeria. So, we had a good dinner in the middle of the nature, followed by a calm night.
Sunset: 20:54 (kilometer 8.347)