Wow! Have we ever been busy!

It is very difficult to realise that we are already at the middle of July! The stay on the boat in Copenhagen harbour was great! Here's a picture of it:

I've been told that while Norwegians use the word "frokost" to refer to breakfast, the Danish use the same word to refer to a mid-day meal. Fortunately, in my last post I was referring to a meal we ate late in the morning, so I wasn't entirely wrong in either sense. (Perhaps not entirely right either, but we can let that slide.) One of the local sights I really wanted to share with you is this phenomenon I observed of beautiful stands of hollyhocks growing out of the cobblestones at the base of buildings all around Christianshavn (the area of Copenhagen where we were staying).

On our last day in Denmark, we did some heavy-duty sight-seeing! We started the morning with a canal tour of the city before moving on to a picnic lunch in the botanical gardens, a pleasant wander through the geological museum, and a mad dash through Rosenborg Castle in the hour before it closed. Apparently time dilates a little when some of us come into the vicinity of beautiful mineral samples.

We hadn't realised ahead of time that Rosenborg also houses the Danish Royal Treasury, so it was a great treat when we got there and found out we could go through as part of the ticket!

On July 9th, we took the train over a large bridge and across much of southeastern Sweden to Stockholm and further to Uppsala where we have been staying with friends ever since. It was wonderful to see familiar faces and to be greeted with hugs and welcoming even though our train had experienced "tekniske vanligheter" (technical difficulties of unknown origin) which resulted in our arrival being delayed by about half an hour. Apparently there are as many construction delays on the various transportation networks here as we are accustomed to in Canada, so our hosts had been monitoring for such possibilities.

On our first full day in Sweden, we did some catch-up shopping for supplies, and checked out the grounds of Uppsala Castle.

The grounds in the picture aren't actually part of the castle surrounds, but the Botanical Gardens of the University of Uppsala. We had a bit of a wander through those after climbing up the slope to the castle. Our friends' daughter told us about an annual local road race in which she took part few years ago. She said that the most challenging part of the route was up the stretch of road up to the castle where we were walking. Since I was a little winded toward the top, I was truly impressed by the athletes who run the route! (And note that the botanical gardens are about halfway up the hill, so those of you who are snickering because it doesn't look all that high from here can just stop!)