Living La Vida Loca

Aaaand we are off again!  

Andrew and I are so very blessed to be able to travel and work (or travel and not work…) and we fully appreciate that flexibility.  As family and some of our friends know, we have also discovered home exchange – a seemingly magical way to swap homes with other people with wanderlust all over the world.  Hence, we are now in Sweden – staying in a lovely suburb of Stockholm – while the family from here is staying in our home in Carlsbad.  This is the second time we have done this…in January we spent a month in New Zealand and part of our time was at the home of a family that had stayed at our home the past summer.  It’s not Airbnb (no money exchanged), and not a rental arrangement.  Simply people sharing local experiences with other people from other places.  We got to know the Swedish family via Skype over a few months and technology allowed us to see each other’s homes, trade local tips and sightseeing ideas, and basically become global “family”. 

While it took us about 15 hours to get here, all went smoothly and our host (Richard) greeted us at the airport and brought us to his home to meet his family and get settled. 

We were delighted to meet and have dinner with Richard’s parents – Pia and Hans – and finally meet his wife, Martina, and their two kids, Victor and Esther. Pia and Hans were very kind to host us for dinner and we hope to spend more time with them during our visit.

Taby is a wooded suburb of Stockholm about a 15-minute train ride into downtown.  This is a 100-year old house that has been lovingly kept up and is very cozy. 

There are deer roaming the woods around us and all the basic amenities we need to use as a base for the rest of our travels. We will be exploring Stockholm and its archipelago with Ruthie and some of her friends who will join us in a few days.  Then we will be joined by dear friends from Seattle and visit Gotland (one of the islands off Stockholm.  On our own we are going to Lapland – way up north – visiting Lulea and Kiruna…the sun just barely dips for an hour up there this time of year so sleeping should be interesting.  The last leg of our adventure will be in south of Sweden with our niece, Kayla, who will be traveling this summer.  Kayla studied in Lund so we will have a “guide” in that part of the trip and it will be fun to spend time with her.

That’s our July – I plan to post highlights as we go along…right now jet lag is nagging at my writing brain so I make this entry short.

For now…

Esther