Gotland 2010 - day 6

After a night at the easy spot by the motor cross track, we ate a quick breakfast and tried to get going early. The weather is cloudy and around 16 C, coldest morning this vacation. Slightly tired, but some coffee made it all better. Wheels up at around 9.15 and we drove towards, Balingbo church to pick of a cache and then to the Kvart Yvar cache. Then we set our sails to Visby and my cousin Anna.

We drove into Annas house and she had made breakfast/lunch for us. We sat and talked and planned the day and then we started walking towards town.

In Visby (Gotlands Capital), every year, on the 32 week of the year there is a Medival Fair in town. The whole city turns into the Medival Village that it has once been. People get dressed up and lots of new stores and booths are brought in from near and far. A giant party and let me tell you, it's insanely visited! Instead of Gotlands 50,000 inhabitants, it's 10 times as many people - at least! The atmosphere is amazing and it's well worth visiting.

The rest of the day was spent in town and at the Fair. We walked around and enjoyed the atmosphere and the joyeus feeling. The people are great and it's amazing to just walk around and look at all the time appropriate clothes and products.

So here follows a large amount of pictures from today... and you might as well get situated, because more will come.... =)

Medival villagers

Lunch at Gula Villan - The yellow cottage. A lovely Salami & Brie sandwich. A cute little café with a beautiful little garden.

A Dahlia in the Botanical Garden.

At the fair - lots of toys...

Time appropriate shoes.

Medival villagers - look at the amount of detail in their outfits.

A wench stirring burnt almonds.

There were insane amounts of booths with silver, gold, glas and Bronze rings. These at the Baby Snake both.

And lots of forged steel product - rings, napkin rings, votives, nails and lots more...

A bath barrel - be bathed by a young maiden was much more expensive than an old maid - and if soap was to be used you payed extra =)

The deserts of the times - candied apples, toffee lollies and fruits.

Lovely pottery - these, with dragons, made by Skuggspel.

A medival lord?

Then it was time for dinner - pita bread filled with grilled lamm and sallad. Very yummy! And for desert chocolate cake and a brown sugar cake.

We took our food and sat down outside the city walls - right by the ocean. The sun had come out to play and it was lovely just to sit there and enjoy the sun and the great company.

Then we started walking home - through the beautiful city of Visby. Via the Gad store as well as Kränku tea shop. Lots of nice things to buy =) And picking off a few caches on the way, Ringmuren 8 and Bingebyparken.

Once at home, we've plated upp tea, coffee, cookies, whiskey, Dooleys and lots of other yummy stuff...

Now just enjoying each others company - and maybe planning for a fun day tomorrow! And teaching Anna more about geocaching =) It's like the plague - we force everyone to become geocachers =)

Cache count: 4 / 456 total. 

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Karoleen - Fotograf © Copyright - All rights reserved.
Bilderna på denna blogg tillhör mig och får ej spridas utan lov.
Contact me at mail@karoleen.se .

Fika

@ Annas house

After a long day walking in Visby and the Medival fare, we're now back home. Now, hanging in the sofa with some tea, cookies and great company :-)

Lunch @ Gula Villan, Visby

Salami & brie sandwich

Gotland 2010 - day 5

Wheels up at 8.45, after a quick breakfast. Although we did get up at around 6.30 because Andy noticed that the light outside was really beautiful and we had to photograph it. The morning air was wonderful and the light was magical - it was really nice to just stand on the edge of the cliff and enjoy the quiet, serene ocean morning. Andy took some amazing shots!

The thermometer showed around 19 C and it was slightly raining when we got going and now we just had to hope for a better day. Although the weather report had sayed that there was going to be quite a bit of rain during the day but then in the evening it would let up and we would get a sunny sunset. Which we really needed since we had booked tickets to MacBeth at Romakloster (Roma Monastery) for tonight.

No special plans today. We'd see what happened.

Our first stop was a cache that we didn't think we could take last year. Dykaren #2 (the diver 2) is a terrain rating 5, the hardest cache type terrain. And just the location made the treasure hunter in me rejoice. It was an old limestone mining location, an old building partially under water that one was to climb or dive into and pick of a hidden cache. This is geocaching at it's highest!

This is what the inside of the building looked like from outside the fence. It's hard to see, but you can se that there is water in the bottom there? That's where you should have swam if you took the wet route. The water you would be swiming in would be an old mining-shaft/hole, that is anywhere from 20-100 meters deep. A really cool place if one wants to/dares to climb around and play around in old abandoned buildings.

After the best geocache ever, we went on towards Bärlast - an old limestone mill, no longer active, but a really nice and quite place. The old mill and a couple of the buildnings still stood. And we made sure to take a cache that we had missed last year.

Then we pressed on towards Slite and did the final step of a mystery cache that we solved yesterday, The Gas Conspiracy. And then we stopped of for lunch at Humle & Dumle, a small café with lots of lighter lunches as well as nice cookies and cakes.

Unfortunetly I was not too happy with my lunch - a panini that really looked unamaginativly boring. It tasted ok, but just the sight of it made me want to cry. But Andy's baked potato looked really yummy.

Then we went on to take 2 geocaches, Bergvägen and Kalkrest, along a large limestone quarry. It was quite massive and strange to see - a road, large as a highway, being used only by a few trucks a day, to haul limestone. Across the road lept this bridge, but I was to chickened to go across it.

After the quarry we went by 4 churches, Hejdeby,  Lummelunda, Hall, Hangvar and Boge and a rauk area, Klinteklinten.

And yes, there were caches to pick at all the locations.

Then we decided that it was time for an afternoon fika and stopped of at Ihre Gård. It's a really cozy place with lots of fun stuff for children to do, but at the same time a peacefull place to have a coffee and just relax. Sometimes they even have the pool open and tennis.

Then we went and took a shower at Gardestugan. We figured that it would be nice to shower if we were to meet people later on the evening as well as tomorrow when we are going to Visby to hang with Anna.

It was time to get to go towards Romakloster and the teater. The road to the Monastery is lined with beautiful trees.

We had a quick dinner in the RV konstisting of bangers and mash. And then we went into the area with a blanket and some rain-resistant clothes. Hoping that the rain would stay away.

Romakloster. There are quite a few shops here during the summers - where they sell lots of different Gotland crafts.

MacBeth - if you look closely, you can se Bancos hand on the stage =) It was a really magical night at the old monestary ruins and it was the perfect setting for iry MacBeth. And there was no rain =) It was a great evening. If you have the chance to go there and see a performance, do, if only to breath in the awesome atomosphere that Romakloster has to offer.

Cache count: 11 / 454 total. 

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Karoleen - Fotograf © Copyright - All rights reserved.
Bilderna på denna blogg tillhör mig och får ej spridas utan lov.
Contact me at mail@karoleen.se .

MacBeth @ Romakloster

Andy and I got tickets to this years Shakespeare production, an annual occurance by the Gotlands Shakespeare Company. This year it happened to be MacBeth. It has been a really rainy day, but the evening has turned out beautiful.

On with the show...

Fika @ Ihre gården

Lunch @ Humle & Dumle in Slite

A terrain rating 5!

We just bagged a terrain rating 5 (geocache!) not our first but funnest! Info: CGw1a2 Dykaren 2

Gotland 2010 - day 4

After a stormy and rainy night, with thunder and lightning playing loudly all night, we tried to get up early but it wasn't too easy. Neither of us had slept that well, in light of the storm. But we did get underway and wheels up at around 10, after a quick breakfast.

Due to the heavy rainfall we were slightly worried about the "Great Barrier Reef" that we had passed on the way to our nightspot. But we needn't worry - the Reef hadn't grow or deepened much.

We drove from the night spot towards the ferry and took the ferry down to Gotland and onwards to Fardume and Fardume castle to pick of a cache, Fardume Castle.

Then onwards towards the rauk area Husken, where neither of us have been before. We had a quick lunch and then walked into the nature preserve. It's not as magnificent as many of the other rauk areas but it's beautiful in it's own way. The rauks are located up on a cliff and therefore the view it lovely. Here we picked off 2 caches, Yvar Husken and Husken.

Then we drove over to Furillen. A small man (army) made penninsula, previously an island, that is literally empty of people. It's a real Gotlandish jem with beautiful stone and sleet beaches, rauks, beautiful nature. It's quiet and peaceful. And since the whole pennisula is pretty much an old army station, there are lots of old barracks and other military installations that are kind of fun to see.

We drove around Furillen and checked on night spots and found a few that we marked. And had some coffee in the sun. But then we went back to Gotland and to the city of Slite.

Slite is an mining city and it has pretty much all the neccessities one might need. Banks, several grocery stores, Systembolaget (a liquer store), shoe stores, coffee shops and so on. We stoped of and did some grocery shopping and filled up on water in the harbour as well as taking a couple of caches amoung others Bussows Backe.

On the way back out to Furillen we stopped of att Ganns ödekyrka, an old medival church ruin. It's quite a specially feeling in these old church ruins.

We spent quite some time here - lots of things to see and Andy did some climbing into an insanly tight stairwell into the church tower. And yes, we did take the cache.

Back on Furillen, we choose the night spot with the most grand view - and it was really magnificent! We were standing on the edge of a cliff (a dropp of about 20 meter) and had a beautiful view of a small bay and the open ocean - towards Finland.

A nice little note written on the beach - Congratulations Ingela & Stefan.

View from the edge of the cliff.

Harmy in the beautiful evening sunligt.

Dinner was a great sandwich that we made with stuff that we had in the fridge and in the pantry. Really amazing sandwiches on bauguette bread somewhat like a Swedish Smörgåstårta or Sandwich cake. A sandwich cake is usually made in layers of toast bread and mixes made with all kinds of yummy things. Usually the mixes are made with prawns or lever paté, ham, créme fraiche and so on.

In ours we had a thick slice of bauguette bread, roasted slightly in a dry pan. We spread some lemon mayo on the breads and lay sallad leaves on top. Then we decorated with cheese and ham rolls, hard boiled egg, Skagenmix, cucumber, tomatoes, black olives, prawns and lime. I think that was about. It was really yummy!

Evening comes fast in the RV, we played some cards and had some coffee and watched a movie before it was time to enjoy the sunset and sleep.

Cache count: 5 / 442 total.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

Karoleen - Fotograf © Copyright - All rights reserved.
Bilderna på denna blogg tillhör mig och får ej spridas utan lov.
Contact me at mail@karoleen.se .

Dinner

RV made sandwich-cake (a swedish delicacy with made from a base of bread and whatever you might have in you fridge or thats to your liking - ours had prawns, skagendip, cheese, ham, olives, red onion, eggs, tomatoes, cucumber, mayonaise and lots of other yummy things. And all if this in the cramped kitchen of a RV.

Fika / Coffee

Lunch

In the ferry que back to Gotland