Visby, Sweden

I arrived in Visby, Sweden a few hours ago and have already found the city to be amazing. It is on the Island of Gotland which is East of mainland Sweden. I am staying in the heart of the old city which is still surrounded by a wall that, as far as I have seen so far, is still fully standing. The wall was built in the 12th century and many of the original buildings and churches still exist as well.

What I found most interesting are the ruins. There are several churches that were abandoned in the 16th century. The walls still stand but roofs were destroyed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visby


This is a picture of the wall with the opening (the small arch) I drove through to enter the old city. I am standing outside of the wall when taking this picture. The opening were not built for cars but thankfully, they do barely fit.

Picture of the coast

A cool old building

Ruins of St. Katarina

Looking inside St. Katarina Church

Just another cool building, typical medieval construction

A cool small ally with an arch. The arch itself is actually a dwelling.

Ruins of St. Hans

More of St. Hans

Ruins of St. Lars

Inside St. Lars

West side of St. Drottens

More of the West side of St. Drottens

The East side of St. Drottens

(I have some other pictures but will just post these for now. I took the opportunity to have Sunday dinner at a local sports bar. I know it's the sabbath but a man's gotta eat and it was the first place I ran into that served food I understood. It was named O'Leary's. The story is that in the mid 80s, a man moved from Sweden to Boston and fell in love with the sports bar atmosphere as well as a local Botston woman. Soon after marrying, they moved to Gotland and opened a Botson-style sports bar in the middle of medieval Visby. They have since opened several locations but they all have the Boston feeling. I tell the story because though I have never been in a sports bar before today, As I sat there eating my BBQ Baby Back Ribs, I felt like I was back in the U.S. (except for the fact that all the TVs were showing soccer instead of football, basketball or baseball).

Prague

I was in Prague on business March 16th - March 29th. Kristal came to join me on the 26th and we were able to see much of Prague 'old town' as well as the 'lessor town'. Here are some pictures followed by a slideshow including most of the pictures we took. Click on any picture to see it bigger.
Charles Bridge


A view of the Prague Castle from the Charles Bridge. The cathedral you see in the distance is within the castle walls.

A view of 'lessor town' at the end of the Charles Bridge

Within the walls of the castle in front of the Cathedral

Powder Tower. There are 13 towers which served as town gates throughout Prague. This one was built in 1478.


A couple street views near the center of Prague

Old Town Square, looking at the clock tower which also has the Astronomical clock as seen below.

Old Town Square

Old Town Square

Old Town Square

Again...Old Town Square

The Astronomical clock at the base of the clock tower


Here is an interesting sculpture.


The Prague Church

and sign

The metro was very deep. Here is the stairs leading down. I had already been on it for about 10 feet before I took this. It took over a minute by escalator just to get to the bottom.

"That was who?!?"

Last Saturday I was at the local electronics store buying a new Navigation System. The employee that was helping me walked me back to the front to pay for the system I had selected. When we got to the register, there was an old man and a younger man speaking to each other as the older gentleman was waiting to pay for his DVD player. The employee shook the younger mans hand, said some things in dutch ( no idea what) and the younger man left the store. The old man then said to me "do you know who that was?". Of course, I didn't. "That was the Prime Minister". I was standing shoulder to shoulder with the leader of the Netherlands and had no clue. He just happened to be out and about doing some shopping. I knew that he lived in Capelle, in fact he lived within a kilometer or so from our old house. I never figured I would run into him at the discount electronics store. My latest brush with a celebrity.

The difference between Hannah and Kristal

The metros were closed today and Hannah had to find her way home. So, she jumps on any old bus and navigates through the city and finds her way home without a problem.

I, on the other hand, have the worst luck with this. I don't have a problem with the metro system. It seems very simple to me, but you throw in the bus and train system and that is where all of my street smarts go out the window.

I have been on a couple of buses and gotten lost with the greatest of ease, but then there is the train and that is another story...

When Chris was in Prague and I had to navigate my own way to church funny things begin to happen in my mind and I get this terrible panic where I have to get off at every stop because I think that we are going to go too far. It took us an extra hour to get home from church because I did it twice. The kids were really loving me then. Luckily, it was a fairly nice day, so no one was freezing to death. On my way to the airport to go and meet Chris I did the same thing and almost missed my flight. When I arrived in Prague and met up with Chris to go out to lunch with his work friends they thought it was quite funny. I guess Chris was walking around the office talking frantically (and very loudly I might add, can you imagine that) on the phone to me trying to work things out and they knew something terrible was wrong:)

By the time we leave here, I might actually have things figured out. Luckily, I have plenty of time to do that. As for Hannah, she will probably be able to go anywhere in the world and get to where she wants to go without a problem:)

I was attacked by a crane while on my walk today...

Just kidding, I really wasn't but I do see a lot of them when I am out and I was just thinking that if I did get attacked by one it would make life quite entertaining. I figured that I could really write whatever I wanted since there are only 3 people who look at our blog:) This is what is up with us lately:

We are officially moved into our new house and have been for a while. I still have a little bit of painting to do before we have any visitors from the US soon but are feeling at home and liking most things about our new area. Maybe, I will even get some art work done for our walls so we don't look so transient. Chris has made some really nice furniture for us that is making life a little more comfortable, but he can go into more detail about that if he wants since they are his creations. We have some 'wonderful' neighbors from India who think that we walk up our stair too loudly and are constantly banging on the wall. It is 'fun'. Besides that though, we love it here. We are close to just about everything that we could possibly need. There are several families in our neighborhood that are in our ward which is a nice change.

The 3 youngest kids really like their new school and have all made friends and are feeling more comfortable then they have in a long time. Abby even told me that she doesn't want to go back to the US until she gets married, that is how much she is liking it. Don't ask me where she got the 'get married' part from, but that is Abby for you, always planning ahead.

Hannah has moved to an international school to get some intensive language lessons. She loves the school and is very happy to be hanging out with a few American kids again. It is also an easier level of education and she is just happy to be doing something that is not incredibly hard for the moment, huh Hannah? As soon as she is done with the program, she can go back to Codarts if she wants to continue her dancing. We are now in the process of finding somewhere else for her to dance while she is away from the school.

Chris is in Prague right now for work and has been for the last week. I will be joining him on Wed and staying until Sun. He may or may not be coming back with me. He may have stay an extra week, but we will see what Novell needs him to do. I just talked to him on the phone and he says that where he is staying it is pretty dumpy, but he has been to city center and says that it is amazing. I am very excited to go and see everything. It ought to be fun! We actually have our American friends' 3 year old boy staying with us while his parents and baby brother are in Spain until tomorrow. He is a pretty easy kid to deal with, but it is wearing me out and I think that he is ready for his family to get home. Anyway, our kids will be staying at their house while I am in Prague.

So, now everyone is all caught up on our lives and I will have to come up with more crane attack stories later because I have a RS lesson to prepare for tomorrow. Tot ziens! Till later!