Thursday, May 10, was simply a get-from-one-place-to-another kind of day. We had 440km to cover and planned no stops except for gas or “comfort.”

We were leaving the southeast coast behind and heading to Lake Vanern, the largest lake in Sweden and the EU. We would be visiting Lacko Slott, a medieval castle situated on a peninsula in the lake. Not just the peninsula but the castle itself is surrounded on three sides by the lake.

In a significant deviation from our historic hotels pattern, we stayed 2 nights at the visitor center for the castle. “What?” you say. A Naturum is an information center focused on flora and fauna and cultural history of an area. There are 18 in Sweden, and they are registered under the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency. We would call them a combination nature center and visitor center. We had visited a Naturum at the Lange Jan lighthouse and birding center on Oland.

“Our” Naturum was located about 500-600 feet from Lacko Slott. Unlike other Naturums (Natura?), the one at Lacko Slott has 15 rooms on the second floor available for overnight stays. It also has a restaurant in one corner of the nature center. If we were going to make a detour in our historic hotel plan, then this seemed an interesting exception.

Naturum Vaneskargarden

We arrived around 4:00pm. We had to leave our car in the parking lot for the castle and nature center. We then had to traipse those silly bags about half a kilometer, up and down a low hill and around a pond. We were able to use a lift at the center to get the bags up to our room, so for once stairs were not involved in the bag transfer.

The weather was quite warm—upper 70’s—but was forecast to change to showers on Friday. So, as soon as we got settled, we headed over to the castle. It was closed by that time, but the light was good, so we walked around it and to a boat harbor beyond.  Jerry had suggested I might want to get some exterior photos before the clouds and/or rain rolled in, and he was right.

Lacko Slott, dubbed the most beautiful castle in Sweden.

Not wanting to drive 23km back to the nearest town, our option for dinner was the little nature center cafe. Once again, we expected little. With luck, a couple hot dishes, salad, sandwiches. I told Jerry I thought it was a good sign the tables were set with wine glasses and natural linen napkins.

Our low expectations were once again shattered. This Naturum, which is in what they call a biosphere, takes its environmental responsibilities quite seriously and has applied that approach even to the food. The vegetables and herbs come from the castle garden. Everything is extremely local. There were very few choices—a meat, lake perch (from the lake just outside our door), and a vegetarian option; an appetizer and a dessert. As an example, they offered a plate of coppa that they make and air dry themselves, paired with a beer they’ve made from herbs in the garden. (It was served with pickled blueberries (which are really tasty little morsels) and roasted carrot, pickled fennel, and a chive mayonnaise and was really good—as was the beer.) Once again, our underexpectations were quickly set aside.

On Friday morning, we took a guided tour of the castle. Unfortunately, it was done in Swedish, and we had to follow along with a printed guide. That made it feel a bit slow. We had to stay with the group even though we could understand nothing of what was being shared. However, it was an interesting place, with incredible painted walls and ceilings.

The King’s Hall

Ceiling in the Austrian Hall

The Dining Hall

We ducked into the the gift shop after the tour and engaged in a conversation with our tour guide and a man that helped us interpret something. (He had lived in Texas for 3 years and spoke very good English. He was excited about us being from Oregon, because he’d heard Oregon has really good beers.) When we were about to leave, the tour guide looked at us and said, “Why are you in Sweden?” Kind of a funny question, but she was quite earnest. She said people don’t come to Sweden. I think she expected us to say we have family there or something. We explained that we had passed through Sweden 2 years ago but had only seen Stockholm and whatever we could see from the train from Copenhagen or the train to Oslo. We wanted to see more. She was genuinely interested and surprised and said, “Good for you.” Also a funny kind of comment. In truth, we have only bumped into a couple Americans since we left Stockholm. Practically everyone in Sweden speaks English. When they hear us speaking English, they frequently assume we are Brits. So maybe Americans don’t make it to some of these slightly off the beaten path areas. They aren’t lacking in tourists, I assure you, but not necessarily American tourists.

We then drove to the countryside about 35km away to see a historic church that was a favorite of our friends, Andy and Laurie. Husaby Kyrka is adorned with painted ceilings and side panels. A very picturesque place. Two people were leaving as we entered, and several people came in as we left. But we were there on our own, which is a nice way to see a place.

Lacko Slott was a pretty low key stop on our trip, which was fine with us. Besides steeping ourselves in some Swedish history and some pretty spectacular architecture, we had time to walk, take a nap, sit out in the sun and fresh air alongside the lake. Not bad at all.

 

Tuesday, May 8, was a driving day. We were heading to the southeastern coast of Sweden. Our route looked like it was on the coast, so we expected to see the Baltic as we drove. The Swedish coastline is so heavily crenellated that the road stays inland enough that the sea is not visible. And it’s impractical to very often detour out to the coast.

We planned to amble along our way, stopping at a few places to see some sights. Our first stop was the historic naval town of Karlskrona, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It was described in our guidebook as having the largest square in northern Europe, which is flanked by two grand churches. Sounded like an interesting place to see.

We made our way through the city and up a hill to the square. One of the churches was being renovated and was partially enshrouded in netting and scaffolding. I was so looking forward to seeing this big square. To our disappointment, it is now mostly a parking area for those seeing the churches and everything else rimming the square.

Not only a parking lot, but a Red Zone parking area. That means you get to pay about double the going rate. We managed to figure out the automated parking payment machine (we and a German couple who were trying to do the same). I’ve gotten the hang of Swedish words enough to get by on one level, but lengthy, technical instructions are more than a bit daunting.

Anyway, we purchased an hour of parking and scampered through the churches and around the square and a side street or two.

Frederikskyrkan.

The German church (easier to say than its official name, Heliga Trefaldighetskyrkan, which means Holy Trinity). Same architect for both churches—Tessin the Younger, who we had bumped into numerous times already.

Then we were back on the road. By afternoon, we decided to take what we hoped would be a more coastal route. It was a beautiful day, and we wanted to see the sea. We drove through an area filled with apple orchards. It was definitely springtime at its peak. Shades of green. Trees in full leaf, lots of white-blooming trees, and, now, blooming apple orchards.

Our next stop was the little town of Kivik, which is known for its winding streets and half-timbered houses. We stopped long enough to wander a few of the streets and then walk along the beach.

It was time to get serious about aiming for our home for the next two nights: Ystad. And here is where some expectations got turned on their heads.

When I was making lodging reservations, back in November or so, I had tried to book a room in a big old seaside hotel. I remembered that for some reason I moved to a Plan B (it was full or too expensive or I didn’t like the feel of it or whatever). But I thought we were still going to an old seaside hotel, fairly big, and probably a step down in quality from Plan A.

What we checked into was a beautiful old house, with only 7 guest rooms, each beautifully decorated. We had to lug our bags upstairs again (I assume you know that the bulk of this burden falls on Jerry’s shoulders), but we had our own large private deck and a very charming room.

As we had bumped into at a number of hotels which are not located in a town (i.e., they’re on the outskirts or in the countryside), they offer a meal package. In addition to the usual (and marvelous) Scandinavian breakfast spread, they offer an evening meal package, and sometimes afternoon tea and pastry. Whenever this option presented itself, we looked at how far it would be to access other options for dining and what the pricing looked like. At this particular hotel, we had opted for the dinner package. Usually, you are deciding that convenience is what you’re going for, and you expect the meals to be fine. But one’s expectations are modest.

We had booked a similar package at the first country hotel (our first two nights out of Stockholm). Our expectations had been low, but we found ourselves in a very pretty dining room and were served food that was at least a couple notches above what we expected. We counted ourselves lucky and thought nothing more about it.

When we checked in to our Ystad area inn, it was in a tiny vestibule, with the steep staircase to our room right there. Just down a short hall from the entry area, was a loud room that was a working prep kitchen and dishwashing station. I asked where we were to go to access the restaurant (also our breakfast room) and was told to go past the noisy dishwashing room and turn right. This did not bode well, though, again, we figured it would be okay, just iffy.

At the appointed time, we headed downstairs, walked down the hall, and turned into a beautiful sitting room, where you could have a drink or help yourself to coffee and tea. Then we turned into the dining room. This was, in my opinion, one of the prettiest rooms I’ve seen. Wrapped in windows and charmingly decorated.

The surprises did not end there. The food we were served was perfectly prepared and presented. The wait staff was highly trained and nothing but friendly and helpful—not a small thing when you speak no Swedish and are dependent on “the kindness of strangers.” The food was being cooked by a young woman and plated by a young man, all in one corner of the open room. I can’t begin to imagine preparing this serious food for a room full of people every night with one (impressive) stove and a couple counters.

Now anyone who knows us would say it’s no surprise at all for us to land ourselves in a foodie heaven. But the fact that we found ourselves in such a situation unknowingly is a surprise. And it was beyond any expectations as to the quality of the food. I would rank our two dinners here amongst the best restaurant meals we’ve had.

After dinner, I looked up the hotel’s website. I swear I had not seen anything about the dining aspect other than that they were offering a meal package. But right there on their site was reference to Daniel Mullern, one of Sweden’s acclaimed chefs and his dedication to all things local. Didn’t see that one coming!

The next morning, we headed down to the dining room for breakfast. No one was staffing the room at the moment. We had passed a man working on his laptop in the adjacent sitting room. He promptly came over to us and asked if we would like some bacon and eggs. We declined and headed for the yogurt and fruit and started to peruse the options. It dawned on me that this man looked somewhat like the picture of the chef I had seen on the website the night before. So I said something about how much we had enjoyed our dinner. He said, “I have very good chefs.”  He then asked me what I had most liked, and I told him and commented on how well prepared our main course had been. This led to a brief conversation about where we were from. He has a relative in Washington, D.C., and has been to Florida and LA. At this point, we finished making our breakfast choices and moved on to a table.

A bit later, our chef friend was leaving, but he made a point of coming by our table and asking what we intended to do that day. We replied that we planned to explore the nearby town of Ystad and perhaps spend some time on the beach. He asked if we had been to Kaseberga. Since we’d never heard of it, we said no. He went on to suggest that we go there, “just 15 to 20 minutes east on the coast.” He said Kaseberga was a charming fishing village, and that its beach was superior to the one by us. He and his family had lived there for 10 years. It is where he started his first restaurant and where he raised his children.

He also told us of some ruins (or something of that ilk) that you walked up to and that had a great view to the sea. He went and grabbed a sticky and wrote the names of the town and the ruins for us. Then he suggested that, since Kaseberga is known for its smoked fish, we should have some smoked fish and some beer.

He left, and we suddenly had a completely different plan for our day.

After breakfast, we aimed our car to Kaseberga. We wound our way through the town and down a steep hill to the harbor. Small town, tiny harbor. There was a big sailboat in the harbor and a couple fishing boats. Not much else going on. Only a couple cars in the parking area. We headed for the automated parking machine and immediately hit a brick wall of Swedish. They seemed to want 160 SEK per day. That’s uncomfortably close to $20, and we didn’t plan to be there for a day. There also seemed to be something about boats. And the only thing in English said we’d get the code for the shower with our parking receipt. So now we were pretty sure this parking area was for a different purpose, but it was the only parking on the harbor. After some testy back and forth, we decided to take a risk and simply leave the car where we had parked without purchasing a parking ticket.

I took a couple pictures of the harbor. While I was there, I watched a fisherman unloading his catch. Within minutes, a Kaseberga Fisk (read “fish”) truck pulled up, and away went the very fresh fish.

We found a sign pointing to Ales Stenar, the name of the ruins our chef had mentioned. It said it was only .5km away. Sounded easy enough. It was up a steep hillside, first with a lot of stairs, then giving way to a wide path. With only .5km, we figured it must be at the top of the hill. We climbed the hill, just in time to see a large group of school children exiting the area. We let them go past and then started walking. That .5km turned out to be more like 1.5 to 2km (thank you Fitbit for confirming our suspicions).

Up the hill and looking back to the harbor. The one big sailboat (flying a German flag) was leaving the harbor.

We eventually arrived at what is called a stone ship—standing stones in the shape of a ship—used as a solar calendar and thought to date back to Viking times. Amazingly, we had this mystical spot on the cliff to ourselves for quite awhile. Sunshine, endless miles of the Baltic at our feet, and 59 stones. And a bunch of sheep that mostly ignored us. Then groups of people started arriving, so we headed back down the hill to the harbor. What a fabulous opportunity. And it was such a fluke that we were there at all.

The sailboat had hoisted its sails and was heading out.

The curious sheep like to use these old stones as scratching posts.

We then debated whether to follow the rest of our new friend’s advice. It was a little early for lunch, but…. I couldn’t help but remember that truck picking up fish right off the boat. And Kaseberga Fisk has a market selling all sorts of smoked fish (and lots of eels, fresh and smoked). No sooner had we decided we would try to get some smoked fish than a bus load of (I think) German tourists got there ahead of us. Where did they come from? And soon dozens of other people showed up. Looked like this little town we practically had to ourselves was on a lot of people’s screens.

Patience is its own reward. We eventually had some of the most delicately smoked and moist salmon we’ve ever had. We “paired” it with a Kaseberga beer. Now that’s dining locally! And we consumed it sitting right on the sea in bright sunshine.

It was so idyllic a day, we didn’t want it to end. This is what we were hoping to experience in Scandinavia! And the fact that we had no notion of any of this when we awoke that morning somehow just made it all the sweeter.

We had to force ourselves to drive into Ystad. We wrestled with yet another automated parking machine. A Swedish woman tried two different cards and couldn’t get it to work and left. We decided to give it one go, and amazingly it worked.

Ystad is a very nice town, with old buildings, a main square, and a big church.

It also has some nice timbered buildings and some windy little pedestrian streets with picturesque houses.

If we’d gone there before our morning adventure, we might have been more affected by it. But nothing was going to be able to top our hillside and seaside experiences in Kaseberga.

On Sunday, May 6, we drove to the southeast coast of Sweden. Another beautiful day, and a relatively easy drive.

We drove through miles and miles (or to be in the proper spirit, perhaps I should say kilometers and kilometers) of beautiful agricultural land. Green fields. Prosperous-looking farms, tidy and in good repair.

Sweden, it turns out, is horse country. Horse Country. The animals we spotted most frequently during our drive were horses. We saw some huge stables and paddocks. We saw not one, but two horse shows in full swing. We saw cars pulling horse trailers everywhere. Though the roadway warning signs we saw most often were regarding moose, we also saw one that warned us to watch for riders and horses.

We arrived in Kalmar in late afternoon. We checked into our historic hotel. One thing we’re learning quickly about our choice to be in historic buildings is that they don’t have lifts. That means moving bags up and down lots of stairs. Our Kalmar hotel put us on the third floor. So cruel.

Kalmar is most known for its grand medieval castle. Being the off season (i.e., the season of fewer open days and fewer open hours), it was of course closed when we arrived. We walked through Kalmar’s Gamla Stan (or old town) and then walked the grounds of the castle. People were picnicking in what once was a moat and up on the ramparts.

On Monday, we focused on exploring the island of Oland. In the early planning stages of this trip, I had hoped we might take a ferry to and spend some time on Gotland, a much larger island. That plan eventually faded away. In its place, I thought Oland might fulfill that yearning. Oland is less than half Gotland’s size. It is very long and narrow (8 miles wide by 90 miles long) and sits between Gotland and the mainland. And because of its relatively new (1972) 3.7-mile bridge from Kalmar, it is much easier to access.

One of the things of note about Oland is that it has windmills. 400 windmills. Now, you know how you hear something like that, and then you can never find them? Well, that’s not an issue on Oland. We must have seen our first windmill within minutes of arriving on the island. And by the end of the day, I’d be surprised if we hadn’t seen 80-100 of them. They’re small and can be seen along the roadways and dotted all over the little communities of the island.

The bridge puts you somewhere south of the halfway point in the island’s length, on its west coast. We drove to Borgholm, about two-thirds of the way north, where we poked around the town and a medieval castle ruin, and got a peek of the King and Queen’s summer residence. Then we crossed over to the eastern side and drove all the way to the end of the island before looping back north on the west side to the bridge.

This is not only a popular vacation destination, but also a place of many working farms. We saw cows and goats and sheep and some very fine farm buildings. We lost count of the tractors and other farm equipment with which we shared the road.

The southern half of the island has an unusual limestone plain called the Stora Alvaret, which has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Only a few species of birds and plants have adapted to living here. It is lined with rock walls, like you might see in Ireland, and  is largely used for cattle grazing.

One of my goals in visiting the island (besides finding some of those windmills) was to see the lighthouse on the southern end of the island. It is Sweden’s tallest lighthouse and is known as Lange Jan.

The Southern Cape turned out to be more special than we expected. It is a highly regarded birdwatching and ornithological research post. There were some formidable camera lenses at work out there and lots of people sporting binoculars. We felt woefully underprepared for this venture. Nonetheless, we enjoyed the views of the Baltic Sea, got to see the lighthouse, and did a little unaided birdwatching.

We loved Oland. It is a really special place. We saw some of the most charming wooden cottages and some marvelous old red barns and stables. Even with the advent of the bridge, which I’m sure massively changed the lives of the island residents, many parts of the island are quite remote from the city. There are half a dozen towns and lots of little hamlets, but one would need to be pretty comfortable being reasonably isolated to make a go of it in this environment. Looked like a perfect place to hole up when one is in the mood for solitude.

I’m pretty sure our visit to Oland will be on the short list of our trip’s favorite places.

Friday, May 4, was our day to pick up a rental car and shift to a very different travel mode. Car trip, here we go!

The Stockholm airport is about 40km north of the city. That is one long taxi ride. All of the licensed cabs in Stockholm list the cost of a trip to the airport on the side of their cars. It’s either 495 SEK or 545 SEK ($62).

We picked up our spiffy new Volvo V40. For people who drive cars that are 13 and 16 years old, driving a car that still has its new car smell is quite heady. (Note to financial planner Bill: This may be what does the trick and gets us to finally buy a new car. We love this car!)

We had a few problems trying to get out of the airport area, but eventually got ourselves onto the right highway and headed south and west to Katrineholm. We had even more trouble getting through Katrineholm and finding our way to our inn.

This was to be our first stay in a historic Swedish country hotel. (We are planning to stay at a number of historic hotels on this trip.)

Dufweholms Herrgard is located on a lake, and its setting sounded just right for a little decompression from being on a ship with a lot of other folks for 3 weeks and a few days in a major city.

Almost as if they knew Jerry would be there, the inn has the largest collection of corkscrews we’ve ever seen. This is just one of four large cases we came across while we were there.

After getting situated, we headed out for a walk around the inn grounds and along the lake. Pretty spot. Wildflowers. Birdsong. Some very noisy ducks and geese.

Saturday was probably the prettiest day we have had on the whole trip. Cloudless skies, mild temps. We decided to drive about 25km north to Julita Gård, an open-air museum. Actually, it’s an old working country estate, which is now affiliated with the Nordic Museum in Stockholm. It sits on a Lake Oljaren and has 2200 hectares of land, dotted with cottages, a manor house, old stables, a church, myriad agricultural buildings, and some beautiful gardens.

We had a great time walking all over the grounds and simply enjoying the sunshine and fresh air. There were very few other people, so it almost felt like we had the place to ourselves.

When we got back to the inn, we had some tea and then spent what was left of the afternoon outside either along the lake or in the garden. A lovely, quiet dose of Swedish lakeside life.