Skiing trip to Åre

We have spent the past few days over the Easter break further north in Sweden at the ski resort of Åre. We were lucky enough to be staying in an apartment only about 50 metres from one of the main lifts and slap-bang in the middle of the town. Åre is filled with a great number of superb restaurants and bars. As we only stayed from late on Thursday until midday on Sunday, we were no able to check out too many, but I can highly recommend Twins - a great place to warm up with a hot chocolate by the fire after a tough day of skiing - and Werséns - for the reindeer meat pizza!

Friday was spent skiing all day, which was exhausting but immense fun. On Saturday, I just skied in the morning as my knees and shins were really feeling the pressure. Our flight wasn't until Sunday afternoon, so we were able to ski again in the morning. 

Now, all I want to do is get back out there on the slopes...

Technorati tags: skiing snow sweden

World's most expensive cities

Swiss bank UBS has released the results of a survey into the most expensive and the cheapest cities in the world and, predictably, the Scandinavia capitals score high on the list. In fact, Oslo ranks as the world's most expensive city excluding rental costs, with Copenhagen in the number 2 spot and Stockholm coming in at number 6. Including rental costs, London jumps from third most to the most expensive city. The results can be found in Swedish on the Dagens Industri website.

Cultural imperalism?

A Danish newspaper has - with its tongue stuck firmly in its cheek - accused Ikea of bullying Denmark and committing "cultural imperalism" by naming its low-value products after Danish towns. The story has been picked up by Business Week in the US and by the UK's Independent newspaper.

Interestingly, this seems to have kicked off a comments debate on Swedish daily Aftonbladet's website about returning the Skåne region to Denmark, 350 years after Sweden took control of it.

Tree

Treated myself to a new ornament for the apartment (something that has been prohibited because of the vast number cluttering up the place), but I argued for its practicality and so now it is sitting on the bedroom window sill displaying my jewellery.

I had spotted one of these trees when we were at a viewing at an apartment a few Sundays ago, and then I found a great little interiors store called Tidlöst near Skt Eriksplan that stocks them.

My new second home

This weekend I went along to Stockholm city library - Stockholms stadsbibliotek (limited website in English, full site in Swedish), which is only about three blocks away from where we are living, and I found a fantastic place of refuge should I ever need to get away for an hour or two...

The fiction section of the library sits in the centre of the building, in the rotunda. I had seen pictures of it before but it still wowed me when I walked in. Also, the English-language fiction section is pretty large as well: I only got as far as L but I had already grabbed three books and seen a handful more that I will go back for.

For those living in Stockholm, all you need to do is fill in the online form, pop down to the library with some id and they'll give you a library card and you're ready to start borrowing - simple!

Alla Hjärtans Dag!

Jag önskar dig en riktigt trevlig Alla Hjärtans Dag!

I just wish that I could enjoy this evening more, but I am still trying to shake off a bad cough and so dinner plans are postponed until Saturday...