July 2021 – Heather

Gotland 2021

July 24, 2021

We spent almost a week in Gotland to celebrate Christer’s 70th birthday! We had wonderful weather, lots of good meals and hanging out with family, plus we got to ride on a very old train.

Christer's 70th birthday!

Christer's birthday brunch

Christer's birthday celebration at Café Maffen.

Christer's birthday dinner

Leo and Max picking mulberries

Battleship - the ultimate challenge

Birre

Max and Ritz

Måns, Max and Theo have lunch at Kalkladen

Cafe at Skulpturfabriken

Heather and Max

Switching the engine on the old train.

All aboard!

Leo and caboose

Skott never wants to get off the train.

Leo and Heather on the old train!

Max and Måns on the old train

Klass and Skott ride the train!

Christer performing with the Annika Fehling Trio

Jorun, Leo, Måns and Christer

Visby

Boys enjoying ice cream in Visby

In Visby

Bagni di Lucca, Italy – week 2

July 12, 2021

We spend our second week in Bagni di Lucca – about 30 minutes north of Lucca in Tuscany. There aren’t many tourists in this area and there are many beautiful rolling hills with villages on top. Also the food is insanely cheap.
We stayed in the same place as we did a few years ago – a little house with a small pool, lemon and olive trees. The hosts are excellent and live next door. There are turtles roaming all over the yard plus a super nice dog named Tessa. The host took us to one of the mountaintop villages for a tour and treated us to Prosecco and ice cream. It was a wondeful time as always!

Bagni di Lucca

Måns and his favorite coffee logo - Hausbrandt

Måns in the pool

Max in the pool

Our neighbor Tessa

Another neighbor who was eating tomatoes on our porch.

Beach at Viareggio (mountains in background)

Beach at Viareggio

Lunch in Levigliani

Tour of old quicksilver mines (mercury)

The boys visit the Museum of Torture in Lucca

Lucca

Ice cream is needed after a hard day at the Torture Museum.

The hilltop village of Montefegatesi

Our host Giuseppe also makes amazing art from things he finds. Here are a few examples on display.

Whole family in Montefegatesi

Leo and Max

Montefegatesi

Dante wrote his Divine Comedy while in Tuscany. They say he stayed in Montefegatesi where he was inspired by levels marked on river canyons in the Orrido di Botri.

Just the appetizer

Måns

Camogli, Italy – week 1

July 11, 2021

We traveled to Camogli, a small fishing village in Liguria on the Mediterranean Sea. We spent a week there in a two-floor apartment with an amazing terrace. We must have taken over 100 photos of the view.
The village had a stone beach that we went to twice. We also took a ferry boat to the abbey at San Fruttuoso to swim. We visited the aquarium in Genoa and went to our favorite ice cream place in Levanto on the train.