Didn’t go anywhere on Sunday. I woke up early and saw the sunrise reflected in the church next-door, just beautiful. I spent a good amount of time weeding around the edges of the veggie garden where beans are growing up. Pia mowed the lawn, something that takes over three hours since her yard is huge!
It was a warm day so in the early evening we all took a dip in the pool. The water is still somewhat green but safe to swim in, though I did not put my face underwater. Pia made cabbage pancakes for dinner with a Korean dipping sauce that was very flavorful. She got the recipe from another work-awayer from South Korea. We also had mixed raw vegetables to dip and Japanese soy sauce. It was a tasty and healthy dinner.
On Monday, I drove Giorgia to Skara where she had an appointment with a chiropractor. That gave me an opportunity to look around a little bit more as the last time I was there I was only able to see the cathedral. I had a wander through the Skara Stadshotell, which had many paintings from Lars Lerin, a famous Swedish artist who seems to paint in a variety of mediums. I really liked his impressionist paintings of ordinary people at work. During my walk around town, I checked out some of the different statues and other public art. I wonder if there is a map to the different artwork, I always like seeing what kind of public art different places have.
I stopped at the café across from the Cathedral – they had a sign that said Vaffla och Kaffe 50 kroner (waffle and coffee five dollars). Roger, the owner, was very friendly and told me that his waffles are the best in the world. 🙂 The coffee was ok, but the waffle was light and crispy, though in Swedish fashion, it had jam and whipped cream, on it instead of fruit or syrup. I found out that the Swede’s celebrate Waffle Day every year on March 25. I may need to start incorporating that into my yearly celebrations! It was a cute little café, very cozy with comfy seating areas and a nice outdoor space with a great view of the cathedral. After that, I walked past the veterinary museum (I think the national veterinary college is located in Skara), the local history museum and ended up at an outdoor museum called Forbyn, which had a variety of houses and buildings from long ago. It wasn’t quite as nice as Asle Ta, but it was still a pretty cool setting.
I picked up Giorgia, who was doing better than expected after her chiropractic appointment. She discovered that she is double jointed, which may be part of the reason her back had been sore – she can easily hyper extend when she moves which leads to pain. We dropped off the recycling we had brought with us. There is no recycling or green waste pick up here, just a garbage can that gets picked up once a week. Every town has at least one recycling center, I’ve seen a few that are next to the local church, likely because it’s one of the few community meeting spaces in a tiny town. You sort your recycling into different dumpsters – metal, glass, plastic, cardboard and paper. They are able to recycle their milk cartons here I think because there’s a lot less wax/plastic stuff on them. I do like that the screw caps stay attached on the liquid containers.
Giorgia and I went back a different way and stopped at Amunstrom gravesite, another area with grave markers from thousands of years ago. It was set up on a hill with a lovely view of the valley and the lake beyond. To get there, we had to walk past a greenhouse next to which was a little farmers stand selling a variety of beautiful looking vegetables. There was a scale for weighing the veggies and a handwritten sign with the cost per kilogram. Payment was made through the Swish app. There was no sign on the road indicating the farm stand was there, I guess they must get enough traffic from tourists stopping to look at the grave markers or locals who know about it.
That afternoon we raked up the cut grass, putting some in the compost bin and bagging up the rest to be taken to wherever garden waste is brought – I guess I will learn where that place is later this week!
Pia had a craving for pancakes for dinner and asked me to make some. I think the last time I made pancakes from scratch was probably when I lived in New Zealand 30 years ago! I am so used to using pancake mix or in a pinch, Bisquick. The recipe that I found was basic except it was an American one so I had to convert everything to the metric system – how many deciliters are in a cup? How many milliliters are in a teaspoon? I’m getting all kinds of an education being here! Thank goodness for Google. The pancakes turned out good – we had them the Swedish way with jam. Giorgia wasn’t in the mood for something sweet so she fried up an egg then had the arugula pesto and cheese on some of her pancakes and used the Korean dipping sauce that we had for dinner last night on the rest. So while it was an American food, it was definitely not eaten the American way. I hadn’t put any sugar in the pancakes per Giorgia’s request. I didn’t really taste a difference in them without sugar, of course, putting jam on top probably helped in that respect.
We finished the day sitting outside and chatting with the couple from Holland who are renting the flat upstairs. Luckily the weather had gotten cooler and the clouds moved in making it a much more pleasant evening. Looks like we have clouds and rain on the horizon for the next couple of days.