Holiday Weekend in Stockholm

This past Monday was another one of the loved, completely random British holidays (summer bank holiday).  Even though we had just traveled the previous weekend, we hated to waste a holiday so took a quick weekend trip to Stockholm.  Stockholm is the capital of Sweden.  The city is spread across 14 islands in the southeast of Sweden so you can generally see water from most points in the city.  The islands are connected by multiple bridges as well as frequent running passenger ferries making the city pretty easy to navigate despite being made up of so many islands.

I loved the other two Scandinavian cities I visited during our time in Europe (Oslo and Copenhagen) and Stockholm was no different.  The people have been really friendly, the cities have been clean, and the weather has been gorgeous (I definitely lucked out with this one though).  I told David if we were ever to do another expat assignment, I would want it to be in one of these Scandinavian cities.

Unfortunately, Colin had a high fever during most of our time in Stockholm so we had to keep our sightseeing to a minimum.  We still got to visit a couple of interesting museums, take a boat ride around the islands, and visit an amusement park.  We also spent a lot of time just walking around, enjoying the fresh air and great weather.  Not bad for a quick two night trip with a sick toddler.  Here are some photos from the trip:

Doesn't get better than a drive through Stockholm

Colin smiling despite his 102 degree fever

Vasa Museum - displays a salvaged 17th century warship

Trying to steal my camera at lunch

I couldn't convince David or Colin to join me at the ABBA Museum

David and Colin in front of the Royal Palace on a beautiful morning

Anniversary Trip to Dubrovnik

David and I celebrated our five year wedding anniversary by taking a long weekend trip to Dubrovnik, Croatia.  Of course, our travel mate Colin was in tow so it wasn't exactly a romantic trip, but I couldn't imagine it any other way.  We decided that we wanted a relaxing trip that wasn't full of too much sightseeing so we booked a nice all inclusive resort to stay at outside of Dubrovnik and spent most of our trip lounging around at the pool.  Colin LOVES swimming and had a blast in the pool with a new inflatable boat that we bought for him.  He was also getting the hang of swimming on his own with water wings on by the end of the trip.  

Of course, we couldn't miss out on seeing the city of Dubrovnik even with our plans focusing on relaxation.  The city of Dubrovnik is a UNESCO World Heritage sight.  The Old Town is surrounded by defensive stone walls and walking the walls is the major tourist attraction in the city.  The city received significant damage during the war in the early 1990s over the collapse of Yugoslavia.  Most of the damage was repaired by the early 2000s, but you still do see reminders of the bombings the city was a target of.  Colin walked the entire city wall path on his own, which was 1.25 miles and included over 600 stairs.  David and I had a hard time keeping up with him!  We also spent some time on the main street in the Old Town (Stradun) including a much needed ice cream break and took a cable car up Mount Srd for a view over the city.

On the way home, we went to the airport to check-in and were told we were removed from our connecting flight between Dubrovnik and Munich (although our flight from Munich to London was fine, other than the fact that we had no way to get there) because we hadn't called to confirm our flight two days in advance.  Huh?  I definitely had never heard of doing that before!  We learned our lesson to not trust an Eastern European airline (Croatia Air) ever again.  They couldn't get us on a flight until the next day, and the flight required a 10 hour layover in Zagreb, Croatia.  Fortunately, our luck turned for the better, and I was able to get us a flight with only a three hour layover in Frankfurt the following day by calling the airline directly.  We also received help from someone at the airport in finding a very nice apartment to stay at with free transfers to the airport owned by the sweetest Croatian family.  The apartment was in Cavtat, a bayfront resort town that we had wanted to see but didn't have time so everything ended up working out despite the inconvenience of getting home a day later than planned.  I guess with all the traveling we have been doing, we were due for something to not work out as scheduled.

Here are a few photos from our trip:

Colin swimming with his water wings in our hotel's pool

Boating!

Not too bad of a view from our hotel's pool

Colin starting out the city wall walk 

View of Dubrovnik harbor from the city walls

The city wall walk was amazing

Dubrovnik cable car up Mount Srd

View of Old Town from Mount Srd

Edinburgh and the British Open

In late July, we took a quick weekend trip to Edinburgh.  Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and is a four and a half hour train ride from London.  We found this to be quite the LONG train ride as we hadn't purchased Colin a separate seat.  Since he refused to sit on our laps, we had to cram him in between our seats.  Not exactly the most comfortable!  We were all happy when we arrived in Edinburgh.  We didn't have much time to see the city since it was such a quick weekend trip so we pretty much left the apartment we had rented for the weekend as soon as we checked in to start seeing the sights.  We were able to do a hop-on, hop-off bus tour of the city and visit the Royal Yacht Britannia, which is Queen Elizabeth's retired yacht, before Colin had enough for the day.  We had tickets to the British Open the following day so we all needed a good night's sleep.

I had given David tickets to the British Open for Valentine's Day this year.  It was one of the things he really wanted to do during our time here in London.  We weren't exactly sure how it would work out with Colin.  Fortunately, I realized that the sitter service we use here in London is UK-wide so was able to reserve a sitter for the day for Colin in Edinburgh.  The sitter came right on time and was awesome with Colin.  They had a great day visiting a museum and playing at the playground while David and I went to the British Open.

The British Open (Open Championship as it is called here) was held at Muirfield Golf Course this year.  It was an easy train and bus ride to get there from Edinburgh.  We spent the day walking the course in reverse and were able to see almost all of the golfers.  David of course loved it, and I actually had a lot of fun as well.  I think we will be going to more golf tournaments in the future!  We had to see Phil Mickelson win from the comfort of our couch on the TV of the rental apartment though as we had to leave before the end to rescue Colin from the sitter.

The next day, we had a bit of time before we needed to catch our train back to London.  We visited the Edinburgh Castle and did some whisky tasting at the Scotch Whisky Experience.  Then, it was time to hop back on the train for another four and a half hour ride.  It was in the high 80s and the air conditioning was broken in our car.  Not the most pleasant end to our trip, but we all agreed that we loved Edinburgh.  Here are some pictures from the trip.

Ready for our day at the British Open!

David wearing his Drake shirt to support fellow golf team member Zach Johnson 

Watching golf was way more fun than I thought it would be.    PGA Championship at Whistling Straits in 2015 here we come!

We toured the Royal Yacht Britannia, which is the Queen's retired royal yacht.  It is also where Prince Charles and Princess Diana honeymooned.

Edinburgh Castle

Edinburgh Castle

Whisky tasting at the Scotch Whisky Experience