Thursday 5 November 2009

Uppsala

About three weeks ago, I took a week off work to use up some of the annual leave that I still have for this year (I never seem to manage to take it all). My 'idealist brain' was planning on just hanging around the house, chilling out and relaxing when my 'realist brain' kicked in and informed me that all I'd really do was fret about how little laundry / DIY I was doing and waste a week. Sadly, my realist brain is generally right so I did a little thinking and realised that 1) I would be safely in my second trimester and 2) it might be my last chance for solo travel for a while, so I booked some plane tickets and flew to Sweden to visit a good friend who moved back there almost a year ago.

She lives in the city of Uppsala, about an hour north of Stockholm and we had a whole day in Uppsala, just walking around, enjoying the sights and sampling the food.
My friend is also an avid knitter, so our wanders happened to take us right past the doors of her favourite two craft shops, however the spoils will have to wait until tomorrow.

We saw the cathedral...


The old University library (Uppsala is first and foremost a university town)...


The castle (very different in style from anything I've seen in the UK)...


and the castle gardens.


The area around the river (some lovely individual little shops etc)...


and a very cool road-sign that has no explanation nearby but apparently is a reference to a famous children's story set in the cathedral area of Uppsala!

A very enjoyable first day to a holiday.

2 comments:

neens said...

Hi I just found your blog because of "uppsala" and "knitting". I have just recentlz moved here and only found the yarn store yll o tyll so far. Do you by any chance remember the craft stores you went to?

MaryD said...

I'm afraid that I don't know which shops I visited. I was visiting a friend who lived there at the time and she piloted me round the places she thought I'd like and I didn't really keep track. Hope you've found some more yarn shops now.