Road trip - Norrtälje

Today has been what we in Sweden refer to as a general, not for all but for many employees, bridge day. To make a little road trip we drove to a small town, very much a summer town really, about one hour's drive north of Stockholm called Norrtälje.

M's family derives from that part of Sweden, called Roslagen which mostly consists of archipelago. It's also a very common part for Stockholmians to have a summer house in. Norrtälje is the "capital" of Roslagen one might say. So now and then we pop by and "do" the town, and of course always enjoy a "fika" at one of the numerous cafés there.

There are also quite a few interesting interior decoration shops to be found there - and be warned it's rather impossible to leave town without having bougt something very *necessary*... - the most prominent probably being Akeba - who has really lovely wellmade furnitures, kitchen ware, fabrics, details, toys etc etc. Just be sure that you get the right price as discussed written down if you order something not available in the store right now since they have a tendency to jack up the price when you pick the ware up...

And if you're interested in books as well as cats - and of course, any sensible human being is. The two things in life you just can't live without! - you should pop in at Ekbloms bookstore and see if their beautiful tortie girl is resting in her basket at the counter (you see her in the picture above, I bought a really sweet picture of her today).

Some other small, specialized, fun shops can be found as well as the usual boring chain stores stuff like H&M, Lindex, Duka, KappAhl etc.

It's quite a cute town with many old wooden houses and picturesque sightings. A creek runs right through it. I didn't get any great pictures today though, the hazy weather made it difficult. But at least it gives you an idea of the place.

And having walked up and down the streets, browsing through the shops, jostled with the crowds on this bridge day with grand weather one most definately deserves some lunch! And as I said before, there are a lot of places to chose from - they even got a dog café with free fill up... - some rather overrated though...

We headed over to Landkrabban (The Landlubber), who serves excellent sandwiches and lighter meals and munched on these sandwiches with seafood stuffing.

The dessert we had at En liten smula - wordplay in Swedish that means something like A little bite/bit/crumb - a periphrastic little place that opened in 2001. My opinion about it is that yes it's a very cute place, friendly staff, everything looks amazing - unfortunately the savour hardly ever live up to the mouthwatering finish... Pretty, but also pretty hyped. As was their price on the Kusmi tea-tins. So disappointing, since I had my eyes set on a couple of new flavours...

The cinnamon buns usually is an exception to that rule - and aren't they just awesome looking?! - we bought some right from the oven today, still warm when we arrived back home hours later... Unfortunately, they were just boringly flavourless and doughy...

But then we enjoyed the very exception to the rule-of-not-living-up-to-its-amazing-looks at the café today - the wild strawberry pannacotta cake wasn't all that, but the chocolate toffee pie with wild strawberry icecream on the side was just d i v i n e!

By and large, a pretty fine day, I'd say!