Day 6: Beautiful Castle

Today's Stats 142km, 25C, sprinkles later

Today's Route: Gunnebo to Karlskrona

Favorite Food: Boddingtons beer in Karlskrona

Expenses

Costs are per person in local currency, 1USD=7.317SEK=0.793EUR.

Kalmar Castle	entrance w English guide	75
Kalmar Cafe	herring sandwich, apple pie, juice	80
McDonalds	giant strawberry shake	30
Torsas fast food	chips and drink	35
Olearys Sports Bar	salmon pasta, 2 Boddintons	220
First Hotel Ja	nice room w bfst-350

I noticed large bags of cut wood that were sitting behind our hotel as they are preparing for their COLD winters. After breakfast we got our bikes from the basement and headed out riding in perfect conditions-- overcast, cool and no wind. However, we traveled on a short stretch of gravel road, but opted to ride along the interstate so we didn't have to do more gravel roads. Since it was Sunday, the road wasn't that busy.

As we approached Kalmar it appeared that a flying saucer was hovering over the city, but it was only their communications tower. We got to tour the "BEST" castle in the world, Kalmar Castle. We really enjoyed it as we had an English guided tour. We had lunch in the king's cafŽ!?! I had the best carrot cake of my life and the food was inexpensive. The Swedish want their people to be able to visit the historical sites without gouging them; not like the USA. All was great until Aaron found someone had stolen his watch that he had left on his bike, like always. Everyone was worried about us when we were in Poland and the Baltics when they should have been more concerned about us in Sweden! We then walked around the town and got a couple of strawberry milk shakes at $2.50 each at McDonald's. We figured we might need them to get thru the next 85K as we decided to ride to the south coast. The Swedish language has far too many vowels, and the Polish have far too many consonants so they should share each others letters. And then the Polish waste what few vowels they have by putting one at the end of the word!?

The ride was gorgeous with many cliffs. The milk cans that are still used as milk cans in Poland are used as flower pots in Sweden. What a world of difference across the sea! I couldn't help but notice the beautiful paintings on so many of their mailboxes. What a beautiful sunset on the Baltic Sea as we arrived in Karlskrona. We stayed the night at First Hotel where our TV welcomed "Erin Bishop!" Our window was inside a mall. It was too bad I still had a couple days riding left or I could have done some power-shopping!

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