Thursday, August 25, 2005

Somewhere to live

Yay! We've finally got somewhere to live for September. This is especially important as my parents are visiting in a couple of weeks. So is it as hard as everyone says to find a flat in Stockholm? Well yes and no. Yes in the sense you can't get a "first hand contract", but if you just accept this and realise you'll be paying a lot more with a "second hand contract", it's not too hard.

I'm off kayaking tomorrow, this time to Norway. It is an "instruction trip" so it's not huge water, but it is another chance to do a new river. Also tomorrow I start my Swedish course so that's pretty exciting.

Sunday, August 21, 2005

Sea kayaking on Stockholm's Archipelago


Last weekend the sun was shining so we thought it was about time we explored the Archipelago. After all the Summer is nearly over and we still hadn't seen our backyard.

So on Friday afternoon I got took the subway, train and bus to Dalarö. Then it was simply a 5 minute walk and we were ready to get into our kayaks. That's the cool thing about Stockholm, that once you've got your monthly travel card, you can go anywhere nearly for free.

For the uninitiated "archipelago" in Stockholm is nearly a euphorism for "lake". The excitement from the waves only comes after a boat has close to you, and quite frankly, if that's the kind of excitement you are looking for I would recommend the playwave in the middle of town.


All in all it was a lovely couple of days of a little bit of kayaking and a lot of lazing about sleeping and just doing not much. (A far cry from my last sea kayak in New Zealand when Greig made me paddle all day for 3 days in a row). The camping was good, the sunsets amazing and the moon at night was awesome.

We did run into one small problem when we tried to go through a little channel marked on the map. It wasn't until we had pulled ourselves through a small way that I decided to get up on the bow and check just how much further we had to go. Well it turned out to be a L O N G way!



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