All posts by hannahviolin

I am a violinist. I also enjoy running, working out, reading, and hanging with my friends and cat.
Scandi Trip, Travel

Day 3: Shrimp and Salmon Cruise in Gothenburg

Present Day:

First of all, jet lag is real. This is day 4 of waking up before 6 am and feeling ready to go but as all days before, that hits me later. I have hopes that my brain is less foggy today, however!

I got started with telling you about our trip in a previous post and let’s move onto the next day now. Just so you know, I am (at this time) doing one day at a time so I can share with you all the amazing pictures I took!

Trip Report:

We woke up early in Gothenburg (or Göteborg) and headed down to the hotel breakfast. You guys. This breakfast was amazing. It was in a sort of indoor courtyard with plants, a 3 story high skylight ceiling, and so many stations of things to eat. A yogurt station with all imaginable add ins and several kinds of yogurt. A hot station with pancakes, eggs, various meats, oatmeal, hard and soft boiled eggs. A table with various salmon, herring, pates, cold sliced meats, cheeses…and so many breads and crackers to choose from, or toast if desired. And coffee with several kinds of juice. Oh, and croissants and other (small) pastries. We ate much more than we normally would for breakfast and tried quite a variety of things. Do I have any pictures? Evidently not from this day.

After that, we didn’t have any specific plans for the day until evening, so the plan was to get the lay of the city on foot, fight jet lag, and enjoy ourselves and enjoy being in a new country.

The streets are quite walkable, and in Sweden (and Finland) cars yield to pedestrians. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t keep an eye out, but it means that if you need to cross, they will stop and let you know, and and that pedestrians have much more space in public areas. Throughout the day we were surprised by how FEW cars there were in Gothenburg and instead people were walking, biking, riding scooters, and taking trams and buses.

We never did try any taquitos, but 7-11’s were ubiquitous throughout Sweden.

We walked through some parks, up to the Art Museum, and all over, it seemed. Louie was navigating, which I like to make/allow him to do, since I am the one who plans the trips, it lets him take over and I can relax more that way.

I thought this row of buildings looked really cool.

I tried to get into Gothenburg University, but I didn’t get in.

The famous Poseidon Statue by Carl Milles. Apparently initially the status had a very large you know what, but the city objected so now it has a weirdly small one. The sun was a little tough to deal with so it’s not super well pictured here, I’m sorry to say.

Very cool doors. On an unrelated note, these are supposedly ankle pants, but seeing in these pictures, they are definitely shorter than that (tall girl problems). I think they are better when I wear them with flats rather than sneakers. Oh well.

We needed to get sunscreen (didn’t want to bring a big bottle, plus nivea had some nice sunscreens in Norway and we were hoping to get some more in Sweden) so we went to a grocery store. I highly recommend going to grocery stores in foreign countries anyway, because it can be so fun to look at the food and see what sort of things they have (and buy chocolate).

The Swedes don’t seem to be afraid of bread and crackers.

Many things that come in tubes! Mayonnaise type things.

The Garden Society. We walked through and saw the Palm House (palmhuset) as well.

We got soup dumplings at a place called 168 (what’s with restaurants only using numbers here, haha?) and figured we would walk a bit more before finding more food. We headed for the Haga neighborhood next, and happened upon a place that is quite popular called Cafe Husaren, which seemed like a good place for “fika” which means coffee, snack, and a little break, all in one.

Now, Cafe Husaren is actually known for their giant cinnamon rolls, but we are only two people and didn’t think we could manage.

During busy times they set up a stand outside for those that just want some pastries to go, but we waited in line inside to get coffees as well. Very good, and fun people watching!

We walked around the Haga district more and then headed up to Slottskogen to get a higher view of the city. Steps were involved.

This was a whimsically painted bus that was a bookmobile.

Anyway, by mid afternoon we were really dragging, so we went back to the room to take naps and get ready for our evening activity, a “shrimp and salmon cruise“, which sounds ridiculous, but I was so excited about it. One thing people and guidebooks said you should do in Gothenburg was see the archipelago, and this evening cruise seemed like a great way to do it while enjoying a fun meal. We weren’t sure what to expect, so let me tell you in case you are reading this and plan to go yourselves. Don’t bother arriving too early, because the seating is assigned, so there’s no benefit to arriving early. We got a nice table by a window in the dining room. You can walk up to the top deck anytime you want, and there is live music in the dining room, but not too loud, just nice dinner music from one man who played guitar and sang. Drinks aren’t included but you can order them, and dessert is also extra. We didn’t get dessert and didn’t feel at all left out.

Our boat. It wasn’t very big, but big enough for the few hours we spent on it. And of course there are bathrooms.

The decor was wood paneling, of course.

They provided wet tissues, which traditionally I am terrified and grossed out by.

The buffet room. It had so many different kinds of herring as well as two kinds of shrimp in the shells, shrimp with mayonnaise, smoked salmon, potatoes, breads and cheeses, various salads, and more. It was quite tasty!

After walking around all day, it was really nice just to have somewhere relaxing to sit and watch the world go by.

It was exciting to see the ocean bus in the water as well, because we had seen it on land earlier!

My first plate of food.

The pictures don’t really do it justice, though I love the water and sky in this one. As we got further from the city the islands got rockier and smaller. Some had houses and other buildings, some had nothing at all. We really enjoyed getting to see it all!

The trip was about 3 hours total, so just a nice amount of time to eat and relax. By the time we got back, we were just about ready to hit the hay, so we walked back to the hotel (at a leisurely pace) and called it a night!

Scandi Trip, Travel

Day 1 and 2: St Louis to Gothenburg

Hi everybody! We are BACK from our epic trip to Sweden and Finland. We were gone for about 2 1/2 weeks and it was amazing. I spent yesterday, the first day home, just sort of doing stuff like unpacking, laundry and going to the grocery store (which was an adventure with my groggy tiredness and jet lag). I was impressed by Louie and I unpacking first thing, but we decided it wasn’t ever going to get any easier so we might as well just go with it. Most clothes were going straight to the laundry anyway! He went to work yesterday, but I get two days off: yesterday I did some emailing and catchup, but today I’ll be doing a bit more getting ready for the semester (setting up my billing) and I suppose I should do some practicing to see if I still know how to play the violin!

We may have gone a bit overboard with the chocolate purchasing, but some of those things are gifts, one of them is potato chips, and some are this stuff called salty licorice that I don’t care for but Louie loves.

Please note this excellent scene on the potato chip bag.

Anyway! Let’s begin. I don’t know if I will stick with one day at a time here, or what, but that’s what I wanted to start with to make the pictures feel more manageable. I called this title Day 1 and 2 because we left on a Saturday but arrived on a Sunday.

Let’s set the scene: or that is, some background. Did I tell you why we decided to visit Sweden and Finland? The idea sort of snowballed from a variety of things, but basically, we both loved Norway so much but felt it was too soon to revisit Norway so we would see another Scandinavia country (Sweden) which Louie had visited more than 20 years ago. But also, he had never been to Finland, so I wanted to add that on, and then we also ended up doing a short jaunt to Estonia as well, just a quick overnight via ferry. We started with a 2 week plan but things expanded with travel times…and so here we are. There and back, and it was terrific.

We had an afternoon flight to Chicago, which was delayed, but not a problem since I chose a connection that gave room for some delays. We had tortas at the Frontera Grill in O’Hare (and got to ride a little bus from one terminal to another without having to leave the secure area), and waited for our “big” flight to board. We had upgraded our seats on the way out to the “slightly more leg room” seats in the hopes we would be more comfortable and sleep better.

The seats were as comfortable as economy class seats can be, and I also used a new neck pillow from Wander which worked well. The flight went by quickly enough: not quickly enough to get a good nights sleep, but quickly enough to get to Helsinki.

We had a layover in Helsinki as well and got some coffees and juice and waited for our last connection to board. Helsinki to Gothenburg was next, and it was a short flight.

We landed in Gothenburg and I had to wait on a bag. We hadn’t intended to check anything on our flights over, but I was bullied by a gate agent into checking my suitcase, which normally wouldn’t matter too much but then we waited about 45 minutes or more for the bags! It was ridiculous and I was mad at myself and the agent.

We got bus tickets on the Flygbussarna, a bus from the airport to the center of Gothenburg, and off we went. I sometimes remember the first time I was in Europe and was fascinated by the different sorts of road signs…it doesn’t pop out as much now, but it’s still fun to notice the different signs and all of the little details that are different from one country to the next. We had a little confusion over which stop to get off because evidently the stop is different on the weekends versus the weekday, but we got off the bus and then used google maps to navigate the 10 or so minute walk to our hotel, the Elite Plaza Hotel Gothenburg, our home for the next 3 nights.

The typical Scandinavian bed set-up: two separate duvet covers. The headboard here was ridiculous and not typical. The room was very nice and in a great location.

The hotel, from across the street. We got cleaned up and headed out in search of an actual meal. Lucky for us it was already about 7 or 8 pm by this point, so we could eat and go straight to bed rather than having to force ourselves to stay awake longer. We had burgers at a nearby restaurant called 2112 and was a rock and roll themed bar. It was jarring to be in a different country, but exhilarating! Sweden uses the Swedish Kronor which you basically divide by 10 in order to think of the dollar amount, but it’s not exactly that. And nobody uses cash, it’s all cards.

After dinner we walked around near the hotel and the water as the sun started to set. I did not get to see if it set all the way down because I was too exhausted.

It’s a working harbor for sure! And so many cobblestones….

Stay tuned for the next installment!

Random thoughts

August?!

Time…it just marches by so quickly, doesn’t it?

Well, August is here and I’m excited. We’ve got our big trip soon…today is my last day of teaching before it and it’s time to do the actual packing. Laundry first, I think.

I’m not dreading the fall starting, in fact, I’m looking forward to it, which means I have made some good decisions about my jobs, I think. I’m happy to not be leaving the house at 6:40 am and I’m happy to have some amazing private students to work with. I also have organized my teaching schedule to allow for book and movie club meetings, and I have some fun gigs and concerts booked for the fall, and it should all be pretty nice.

But first, of course, Sweden and Finland. It will be glorious to be out of this oppressive heat! We went out to see some jazz music last night at 9:30 and the humidity was just awful. Still awful when we came home after 11! I can’t wait to have a little cooler weather and spend my days walking around seeing new stuff, sightseeing, kayaking, riding ferries, and eating strange foods.

With all this, it will mean the summer is over. I’ve been spending the last two weeks putting my summer schedule together and communicating this with the parents I work with, and it’s been like herding cats into a house of cards, as usual. I am trying not to stress over it: either things will work as they stand or they won’t, but I’m doing my best, there are limited hours in a week, and if people choose not to open emails I mark “important, please read and respond” and then they miss out on something, it’s not my fault. (I am always aware that current students might be reading this: if you see yourself in it, be aware you are not the only one and I’m probably not even talking about you, but I’m just venting anyway, and if you know you read your emails, I am eternally grateful to you for saving me hours of time.) I know this time of year is hard for parents with scheduling and school starting and there are so many moving pieces, but it’s also hard for those of us that work with kids! I may be a childfree cat lady, but I sure do a lot for this nation’s children.

I haven’t taken as many pictures lately: the past week has been a lot around the house, getting things organized to travel, finishing up summer work, prepping for fall, etc. Lots of emails, lots of reading, some practicing, and making sure the itinerary for our trip is in order. I have some great stuff planned, and lots of time to spend walking around exploring.

How is the end of your summer going? Any end of summer trips? Or maybe you have a life where summer is no different than other times of year except it’s hotter? That must be really strange in some ways, haha.

Random thoughts

Weekly Bike Ride

This summer we’ve been having a bike ride every weekend, for the most part. Today was a high of 80 degrees and overcast, which for those of you following at home, is insanely cool for July in St Louis. We loaded up the bikes and biked Grant’s Trail, which isn’t terribly shady but didn’t matter today: I didn’t even need my sunglasses! It was a lovely ride and I forgot to take even a single picture. My legs are getting stronger but my rear end was still sore by the end. We did about 16 miles round trip.

Right at the end we learned that Biden had dropped out of the race, and while I had been apprehensive about it and thought Biden was being railroaded, this gave me hope, and I hope you all feel that as well. We need some hope!

After that we got lunch and stopped by our old house to set out some things for bulk pickup. We are still in the process of clearing it out and fixing a few things up to put it on the market. Louie has been working on some trouble sections in the walls.

Wallpaper that had been covered up. So pretty! But I’m sure there was a good reason to cover it up…(or not, haha.)

I’ve been playing Fiddler on the Roof and yesterday also had a lovely wedding out in Weldon Spring.

A beautiful setting for the wedding ceremony! Strathalbyn Farms Club in Weldon Spring.
The building for the cocktail hour was built around an old cabin from the 1820’s. Very cool!
One of two cats we saw wandering around.

This is the onstage fiddle for the Fiddler on the Roof. It doesn’t make a sound but the actor actually does know how to play the violin!

I have a bunch of performances this week plus Gateway Festival Orchestra on the weekend as well as one wedding to play. Student wise it’s probably my lightest week of the summer: only 21 students! Things are winding down and soon we will be in Sweden! I’m sure I’ve mentioned, but we are going to Sweden, Finland, and Estonia soon, just Louie and I. I am super excited and looking forward to eating seafood and potatoes, along with who knows what else. I think it will be a lot of fun and really interesting.

Have any readers been to that part of the world? Have you done any biking recently or seen Fiddler on the Roof?

Random thoughts

The Living is Easy

1 Comment

I haven’t felt as drawn to type here…the world is a mess right now, and things are feeling really scary.

But here we are! The summer…I have to say, since I am not returning to my early morning school job in the fall, I am not dreading the fall in the same way I was the last two years or so. Summer has ended up being quite busy with work anyway, with 30-40 students a week plus some gigs. Not as many wedding gigs at this time, but plenty of musical theater gigs, and it’s been a lot of fun.

We’ve had time for some bike rides and plenty of evening events. Last week after getting home from visiting my family in Chautauqua, we went to several jazz shows, a musical, a wine dinner, and an opera.

A jazz show over dinner at Evangeline’s in the Central West End. I work at Wash U with the guitarist, Vince Varvel.
And then to the Blue Strawberry for Kendrick Smith.
The Little Mermaid at the Muny with my friend Marie
Carmen with Union Avenue Opera: I absolutely adored this performance!
Wine dinner at the Whittemore House. The food was terrific, and I loved the wine and mead as well.

It was a lot of busy nights! Sunday then Louie and I loaded up the bikes and biked from Augusta to Defiance, ate lunch in Defiance, and biked back.

We stopped to pose with this beautifully painted grain silos, which were painted in 2021.

We’ve been biking every week: it gets awfully hot here for hiking and Louie was pushing me to bike with him, so I’ve been plotting out various trails (mostly on the Katy Trail) for us to try together. We’ve enjoyed biking and eating lunch either at the end at a nearby restaurant or at the halfway point. Both have their pros and cons.

Another view of the painted silos

This week has been busy with teaching and getting ready to play Fiddler on the Roof at the Muny. I’ve been having so much fun playing with the group this summer: I’m sure they won’t need me as much next year if they have an audition, and while I’ll take the audition, who knows how it will go, so I’m trying to enjoy it now.

The rain yesterday was pretty crazy: we had some flash flooding and were super surprised by how much rain was falling. I had to get groceries in the middle of it: in retrospect I probably should have waited for the rain to stop, but my weather app said it would, so I headed out and then instead of stopping it got worse! I did make it home safely but there were a few sketchy moments. Good thing climate change isn’t a real thing and instead it’s just really strange that now we keep getting all this extreme weather, huh? I’ve also realized that the weather apps are simply unreliable and are fairly useless for anything except perhaps telling the temperature. They pretend to know when it will stop and start raining, but it sort of feels like gaslighting since it is practically always wrong. Why tell me it will stop raining in 7 minutes when that is just wrong?

But I digress. As I nearly always do! Cat time!

We have a great cat sitter who always takes tons of pictures of the cats interacting with various toys she brings. I’m always sad to leave the cats, but I know they are in good hands and probably enjoy having the house to themselves for awhile too, as long as their basic needs are met. They have each other too! I’m sad to think of leaving them while we are in Europe too, but I’m sure they will be fine…

What have you been up to this summer?

Chautauqua

Chautauqua Time

Louie and I prefer to visit many different places in the summer: we know people who always do the same thing every summer with their families and it has never been our thing. Yet, we find ourselves visiting Chautauqua for the fifth year in a row, because it’s a lovely place, but it’s also a place we can go hang out with my niece and nephew and sister and brother in law and relax!

Though, when you are dealing with a 5 and 9 year old, relaxing isn’t as much of a thing as you might like. I’m just going to give you some of the highlights of what we did.

We had dinner out at a place called Pine Junction. I recommend the coconut shrimp!

We spent some time at the library on the grounds of the Chautauqua Institution. This lion tried to keep us from entering. My nephew really enjoys seeing the library, but he also loves riding the elevator in the library and pretending he doesn’t know it is an elevator and being surprised every time we get to a new floor.

I brought a few gifts, and the biggest hit seemed to be a game called “Cats and Boxes”. I recommend it!

One day Leslie, Louie and I did some kayaking. It was harder that we thought it would be!

Louie had the single kayak and was much more skilled at using his.

Some of the lovely homes overlooking the lake.

We went to Westfield one morning for brunch at the Parkview Cafe (sadly no picture of that, which is sad because Louie and I live in a neighborhood called Parkview), and their claim to fame is that Lincoln got a letter from a young girl who said he should grow a beard in order to win the presidency, and then he did, and visited Westfield later and met the girl. The story is printed on the mugs at the Cafe and then we noticed there was a park on the corner commemorating all of this.

From the Philadelphia Inquirer of February 20, 1861:

At Westfield, Mr. Lincoln greeted a large crowd of ladies, and several thousand of the sterner sex. Addressing the ladies, he said, “I am glad to see you; I suppose you are to see me; but I certainly think I have the best of the bargain. (Applause.) Some three months ago, I received a letter from a young lady here; it was a very pretty letter, and she advised me to let my whiskers grow, as it would improve my personal appearance; acting partly upon her suggestion, I have done so; and now, if she is here, I would like to see her; I think her name was Miss Barlly.” A small boy, mounted on a post, with his mouth and eyes both wide open, cried out, “there she is, Mr. Lincoln,” pointing to a beautiful girl, with black eyes, who was blushing all over her fair face. The President left the car, and the crowd making way for him, he reached her, and gave her several hearty kisses, and amid the yells of delight from the excited crowd, he bade her good-bye, and on we rushed.

Louie and my niece reenacting the statue which was of the meeting. It seemed like a pretty big deal for something small, but I guess you make a statue when you can!

We watched Jurassic Park live in concert. I guess I hadn’t seen Jurassic Park in a long time, and it was a much better movie than I recall–have action movies gotten so much worse lately? Or perhaps it was always pretty good and it was the sequel that was bad? In any case, the music was too loud sometimes but we really enjoyed the evening.

My niece is in an opera this summer and we saw part of a rehearsal. She is in Hansel and Gretel as part of the children’s chorus and this was the rehearsal where they starting adding in the staging to the music. I’m sorry we won’t get to see the performance.

We had been doing some nice photos and some silly ones, and evidently nobody understood which was which.

Selfie at Bemus Point. I bought new sunglasses on this trip (I really needed a pair as my “good” pair had broken and I had been wearing a very scratched up pair) and I like the look of them!

Overall we had a lovely visit. Not pictured: time in the hot tub, walking around the farm land where they live. Lowlights: waking up early with the kids and sometimes a 5 year being a little whiny, but super cute and loving as well. The 9 year old was definitely more mature than ever, very skilled on the violin and piano, worked great with her little brother, and they both seem to be having a great summer! My sister and her husband are busy running around doing more than one job each and keeping the house running.

We got home then, and I got to truly sleep in yesterday: I slept till 9 and it was absolutely glorious. I always love spending time with my family, but it is also wonderful to get home. Oh! We got Taco John’s on our drive home, which was good. We like to get bean burritos and potato oles and then put some potato oles into the burritos to add texture and flavor. Delicious!