cobblers

Countries I Have Visited

From this pretty cool website Travel66 where you can generate a world map of all the countries you have visited. Heres mine...

create your own visited country map
or write about it on the open travel guide

Here's the link of the picture doesnt look too good.

Thats only 24 countries or 10%. Must get out travelling again soon.

Holidays or work? whats that!

One of the customs in Sweden is to yake a long summer holiday, usually at least four weeks in July or August. When I first came over here i was all "but that means you dont have any holidays for the rest of the year!!", but now I can see the reasons for it. Sweden is usually pretty stabil when it comes to summer weather i.e. you get more than one sunny day at a time, so its a good time of year to be off work. Also 4 weeks is enough time to completely forget about work and relax, letting all the stress out of your system.

Me, well with some paternity leave I've got five weeks starting today :-)

Flying from Scotland to Sweden

This used to be a real pain, as there were no airlines that flew direct from Scotland to Sweden. A stopover was always needed. I've flown all the way down to Paris before and then all the way back up, and that's no fun :-( And it takes so long with the waiting time in between flights too.
Then Ryanair started flying direct to Prestwickfrom Skavsta. Unfortunately both of these airports aren't very near where I live in either country, but at least now it's only one flight even if it takes about as long to travel.
But now I have just discovered that SAS have started flying from Arlanda (about 20 minutes from where I stay in Sweden) direct to Edinburgh. Not only will this cut down the travel time, a great thing when our daughter Elsa comes with us, but is also much cheaper (well not cheaper than Ryanair, but nicer).

Another cool thing about flying with SAS is that you can check in via the internet or using your mobile phone up to 22 hours before the flight leaves. They also have a self-check where you print out your own luggage labels and things, makes for shorter queues. I like it when technology is put to good use :-)