Sweden Part 1

The kids were great on the long plane ride to Sweden. We took Air France via Paris to Stockholm - and while aboard August made sure to say 'Bonjour' and 'Merci' to the stewards. He says he learned those words from his French friend Antoinne in Prep 1. The staff appreciated it and it was so cute to hear those words come from his mouth.

Upon landing in Paris, the steward for our section let the kids unbuckle and come to the window so he could show them the Eiffle Tower. The kids were so excited, mostly due to their love for the movie Ratatouille. Once we saw the tower we had to spring back into our seats and buckle up for the landing.

After a short layover in Paris we had a 2.5 hour flight, to Stockholm. I was excited to hear the people around me speaking Swedish but since it was an Air France flight people were still speaking French. :-(


We caught the bus to Uppsala and there was 1 smiling face + 2 sleeping children waiting for us when the bus reached it's destination. Linda was happy to see us because she didn't know what bus we'd be on due to flight delays, collecting luggage, customs, etc. Linda, Kaisa and Jonathan had just arrived from Egypt a few hours before so the kids were exhausted and catching a nap while waiting for us.

We got off the bus, said our HELLOs and started looking for a cab. They had to call a special cab large enough for our group of 6 + luggage. The cab took us on a 1 hour drive to our new home-away-from-home in Tarnsjö. Linda was a little taken aback by how far our sommarstuga is from the city of Uppsala but we were excited to be in Sweden.

As soon as we arrived at the cabin, we opened the taxi doors to exit, and the inside of the cab swarmed with mosquitoes. Linda and I both thought India and Egypt were bad but they don't have anything on Tarnsjö. We had to make a run for it into the cabin.

A few hours later the cabin's owner arrived. He said the mosquito infestation is the worst it's been in 20 years and he apologized over and over but there was little he could do. He said he'd buy a machine that kills mosquitoes by the thousands so we could be outside a bit and he would also put up a screened-in tent in the yard so we could enjoy meals outside. We said that would be good. We were leaving for Estonia the next day so this would give him almost 5 full days to deal with the problem.

The next morning the owner's son came to the cabin to pick us up to take us to the bus stop so we could start our journey to Estonia...