A day of walking in Visby among its rosebushes and church ruins. There are more roses than ruins in Visby, but the ruins were definitely more fun to look at and to photograph.

The first ruins we passed today didn’t look super exciting from the outside but had an invitingly open gate so why not. And while they weren’t super exciting, they were pretty nice, so we went inside the next ruins as well, and the ones after that, and then some more. And some of the later ruins turned out to be quite exciting indeed!

The churches were abandoned during the reformation, five hundred years ago, give or take. Just… deemed so worthless that they were abandoned. Not worth keeping dry, not worth tearing down. I guess there would have been beggars or vagrants living in them, maybe. And now they’re tourist sights.

Some are more broken down and overgrown with grass. Others have pillars and vaults still standing. In a few we found stairs inside the walls, and in one them a walkway high up circling most of the nave, still walkable all the way around.

I like vaults. And pillars, and towers, and walls thick enough to have stairs inside them. If I was filthy rich, I could totally imagine buying an old church to live in. I guess there might not be any available in Sweden, though. I wonder what it would cost to build a medieval-style stone church.


What I really liked about these ruins is how un-tourist-adapted they were. No handrails, no warning signs, no bars to keep you from falling (except where there were large openings where you could by accident literally walk off the edge). Wander at your own risk.

There are myriad rose bushes lining the streets in Visby old town. Hollyhocks, snapdragons and poppies also grow just about everywhere, even in pavement cracks.


By the way, Visby turned out to be quite empty of tourists. There are no hordes of Stockholmers filling the streets. This really was the best time to visit!

Because of the coronavirus situation, our annual Estonia trip and our equally-annual hiking trip both get added to the long list of “things we were looking forward to but had to cancel”.

Non-essential travel in Sweden is now allowed, though, and I’ve been vacillating about whether and where and how we should travel.

On the one hand, we don’t need to travel. But on the other hand, if we’re careful and avoid crowds and travel by car and don’t go too far (so we can get home if anyone falls ill despite everything) then it should be OK.

On the one hand, this might be the best time ever to travel to e.g. Gotland. No crowds, hopefully, which would be really nice. (Adrian’s and my trip to the empty Old Town in Stockholm was my best time there, ever.) And the hospitality industry could do with some support or the whole bunch will go bankrupt. But on the other hand, what if everyone thinks like that, and we’ll be one of a gazillion annoying Stockholmers there?

We took the chance, in the end, and here we are on Gotland. We arrived in mid-afternoon and spent the rest of the day simply walking around the town, following the city wall.

The wall is pretty amazing. It’s worn and dilapidated and none of the towers are standing (unlike some of the medieval towers in Tallinn for example). But the wall itself is still standing along its entire length, and you can follow it all the way around the centre of Visby, which is pretty darn impressive.

I am surprised at how much vegetation I see growing on the wall everywhere. It looks pretty, but roots generally tend to weaken walls, so I would have expected it all to be cleaned away.

Last day. We’re taking a train to Stockholm in the afternoon, but squeezed in a few hours of skiing in the morning. As usual, the slopes are very empty on switchover days (weekends) which makes for extra pleasant skiing. Just look at these empty slopes! There’s barely anyone there!

As usual, I’m a much better skier when I have the slope all for myself. I don’t have to think about where other people are and where they might be going. I can get into a flow and just turn. Swish, swish, swish.

I liked Åre. But then again I’ve liked all the other ski resorts we’ve been to as well.

Åre is larger than most ski resorts in Sweden, with more pistes to choose from. For everyone except Ingrid, that wide choice doesn’t matter much – we won’t use the red or black runs anyway. Mostly what we want is a variety of blue slopes. Our excursions to the plateau and the peak were fun, though.

I was afraid that it might feel too large, and since it’s very well-known, that it would be crowded. But it was no more crowded than any of the other places we’ve been to. It did feel a little bit more commercial and less familiar than e.g. Kläppen, where all the lift attendants always said hi and high-fived the kids.

One thing that really impressed me in Åre was food. The quality of food was really good in all the restaurants where we ate, and the range of vegetarian options much wider than what I’ve seen in other ski resorts. I remember hopelessly alternating between pizza and the same boring halloumi burger every single day for a week in Idre, and the one and only dinner option there was a cheap, greasy pizza and kebab joint. Here, too, most restaurants had a vegetarian burger on the menu – but all had some other vegetarian choices as well, and even the burgers varied. I can survive on dull food of course, but I’m much happier if I get tasty, varied food.

Another beautiful but cold day, and we made another outing to the top.

Skiing from here to there involves one really steep red run. It’s so steep and icy that when I reached it last time I was uncertain whether I would be able to ski it at all. I was very sure that Adrian wouldn’t be able to do it. Instead we took the free ski bus to the cable car station, queued for a while and took the cable car straight to the top. Very convenient.

At the top (which is not technically the top of the mountain but I’m going to call it the top anyway) everything is encrusted with snow. The cable car station doorway, all the buildings, the signposts, the cables. It looks almost surreal.

From the top it’s mostly nice, gentle, long ski routes down. Pure pleasure and sightseeing!

A day or two before our trip, I checked the weather report for Åre and packed accordingly. The weather forecast was way off target, both fortunately and unfortunately. The forecast promised temperatures just around freezing, and clouds all the time. Instead we have temperatures well below &ndash,10°C, and much more blue skies and sunshine than I had hoped.

Yesterday the cold didn’t bother me. Today by midmorning I was so cold I had to go back inside and double up on all my layers. Double polar fleeces, double leggings, double wool socks. Double layers on my hands I already had – I wear merino wool liner gloves inside my mittens so that I can take off the mittens (for taking photos, for example) and not immediately feel like my fingers will fall off in the cold.

In the afternoon we stopped at a piste-side café for a hot drink. Does the water in the vases look cloudy? That’s because it’s frozen. The tulip stems are encased in lumps of ice. But we’re out of the wind, and the hot drink is hot, so that’s all right.

Adrian meanwhile wasn’t bothered by the cold at all. He’s like a walking nuclear reactor.

He’s still bravely practicing the snowboard. I was a bit skeptical and thought that he would probably give up after a few days. But he keeps at it, not just during the lessons, and he’s learning fast. He is already connecting his turns and getting some flow going.

A cold morning (–14°C); slightly less cold during the day.

The Björnen area suits us very well, with its variety of blue runs. Even when we’ve ventured further away during the day, late in the afternoon while Adrian has his snowboard lesson (and Eric goes home for the day) Ingrid and I just go up and down the Järven lift and its blue runs. They’re very pleasant: wide, curved, wooded, not so steep that they get icy. And with beautiful views!

The Järven lift is close to a lot of housing, so its queue fills up in the afternoon with people heading “home”. But because they are heading home, the runs down from this lift can be nearly empty. I’ve skied down here several times without seeing a single other person.

Most lifts here open a “singles queue” to one side when the main queue grows long, to make sure that any free seats get filled and the lift runs at maximum capacity. These queues always move much faster than the main ones. Especially with the larger chairlifts we’ve now learned to always head straight for the singles queue, even when it looks longer than the main queue.

After two gray days it was bright and sunny today and very little wind, so I wanted to head up to the higher slopes. See some views, maybe take some photos.

Getting from Björnen (at the far right end of the piste map) to the pistes near the peak of Åreskutan (at the far left of the piste map) and then back again took me and Ingrid effectively all day. We were not the only skiers heading in that direction and the lift queues ate up a lot of time.

We did get some wonderful views up there. And the slopes were quite to my taste. The map marks them as ski routes rather than pistes – they’re relatively long, narrow and gentle. They’re great for just gliding along and taking in the views.

The slopes were not crowded but the restaurants on that side of the resort were all completely packed. At one place the waiting time for a table was over an hour. So I didn’t enjoy all the fabulous views as much as I might have because towards the end I was just so hungry.

Meanwhile Adrian and Eric stayed in Björnen all day. Adrian has decided to learn snowboarding and is taking lessons, but it means he’s effectively a total beginner on the slopes again and can only manage the gentlest inclines at the slowest pace.

I’d like to see those views from the plateau again, and show them to Eric and Adrian as well. I’m thinking of going back up there another day, maybe on a day with less beautiful weather and therefore fewer people. And with an earlier start and a more efficient plan.

The weather was much less windy today, and we were all much less tired, so we enjoyed our skiing a lot more. We explored new lifts and pistes, but generally still stayed in the Björnen side of Åre. The upper areas were still closed due to high winds for a big part of the day, so we couldn’t ski to blue pistes on the other side of the mountain. There are shuttle buses but it didn’t seem worth the effort when the blue pistes on this side were so nice. Especially late in the afternoon when the sun came out, and the lifts and pistes emptied.

We arrived in Åre at 7 in the morning. After a breakfast at the train station, our first priority was changing clothes. We travelled in clothes suitable for Stockholm where the temperature was an unseasonally warm +5°C. Here in Åre we were met by winter, closer to what Swedish winter is supposed to be: the temperature is below freezing, it is snowing, and the wind has a real bite.

Shuttle buses took us to the Björnen area where we picked up our equipment and left our luggage. Then we were ready for the slopes.

The wind remained strong and unpleasant most of the day and the skies were gray and heavy. The lifts to the upper slopes were closed and we probably wouldn’t have wanted to be up there anyway. So we stayed in the lower slopes around Björnen.

By lunchtime the kids were already tired. The skiing was nicer in the afternoon and we got some beautiful moments of sunshine. But after last night’s short sleep we felt quite done by around 15.

It’s sportlov and we’re taking the night train to Åre for a week of skiing.

We’ve “always” travelled to the fells by car. The closest ski resorts are about 5 or 6 hours from Stockholm by car, which in practice means a whole day of driving. That’s about as much time as we/I are willing to spend just sitting locked up in a car, so this limits our options quite a bit. Åre, for example, is one of the most popular ski resorts, but is too far from Stockholm by car (for my taste).

This time we thought we’d try something different and take the train instead. We travel in a more climate-friendly way, get back that lost day – and get to try out a new resort.

On the downside, we get a very short night of sleep. The train was supposed to be ready for boarding at 23:00 and leave at 23:20. Now it’s delayed until 23:30. We’re tired and bored.