Sweden day 1: Staffanstorp & surrounds

One of the many reasons Michelle and I are BFFs is that she does stuff like this:

That's right, that's an activities board with a list of fun things to do on each of our days here. You'll notice that each activity is on a post-it note so they can be easily rescheduled if needed. Brilliant!!!

Day 1 activities

Day One activities were fairly low-key. We arrived at their house in the late morning. After a shower and a change of clothes, we had a traditional Swedish breakfast for lunch. It was the perfect meal after 4 airline meals!

Here was the spread:

If we were meat-eaters, there would have been cold cuts and liver paste, too. The idea is to spread butter on the bread, put on sliced cheese, and then top it with the cucumber and pepper. It was a really tasty combo! The kanelbulle was a gift from Chris and Michelle's neighbors because they knew company was coming! It's small cinnamon roll that you're meant to eat with your coffee break during the day. So yummy!

The Swedes know how to have breakfast! I really like the combo of the butter and cheese, especially with the veggies.

After breakfast-lunch, we headed out for a nature walk. Chris and Michelle's house is right across the road from a field that has a beautiful walking path by a creek and farmland. (Which also happens to be where the bus stop is.) We took Charlie out for a nature stroll and checked out the landscape of southern Sweden.

Super ready for a walk!

There were lots of cool snails around!

Swedish swans

Swedish thistles

 

Michelle brought some bread to feed the ducks. It turned out the cows wanted some too. And Charlie really didn't like that the ducks and cows were getting fed and he wasn't! Luckily there was enough bread to go around.

After our walk, we stopped by the playground/exercise equipment to really complete our walk.

 

But Charlie got bored with us playing around on the equipment. So we took him home, grabbed bikes, and headed out to explore Staffanstorp by bike!

One thing that we are really appreciating about Sweden is that it's meant to be biked. There are nice, wide bike paths everywhere! Also, bikes and pedestrians pretty much have the right-of-way, so you don't really have to worry too much about the traffic. It's how bike riding everywhere should be!

Toby is ready to ride!

Check us out!

It wasn't 10 minutes before we arrived in the central square of Staffanstorp. Clearly, it's kind of a quiet little village.

The central square. That's it!

Chris and Michelle popped into a little produce market while T and I poked around.

Lingonberries and winter flowers for sale!

Then we headed to a couple other grocery stores around the more commercial part of the city. Even though that doesn't sound like a super touristy thing to do, it was really fun biking around the town. Not to mention interesting to see all the different foods and the ways the stores operate.

Like seeing so many food in tubes!

Mmmm... Bacon cheese in a tube!

There was also some interesting produce. Like this giant cabbage.

Cheese also runs big here.

One of the grocery stores we went to had an interesting system: when we walked in the store, Chris went to a wall of hand-held scanners and picked one up. As we shopped, he scanned each item as we put it in the basket. To check out, you simply return the scanner and bag up your items: the price is already tallied for you so there's no need for a cashier or a scanning station. It was pretty cool! Here is Chris demonstrating the scanning procedure.

 

We biked our groceries home where Chris prepared us a tapas/game day dinner: Spanish tortilla, roasted red pepper salsa, mushrooms with cheese on toast points, and a cheese board. Then we settled in to watch the UT game - just like old times!

I made it to 7:30 before falling asleep sitting up. I decided that was probably a sign that I should call it, so I did. I had to rest up from an amazing Day 1 and get ready for Day 2!

 

Posted with Blogsy