Polkagrisar

I think today was the best day we have had here so far. We were a little worried starting out (since we knew we would be riding bikes and not many of us had been on them in awhile) but it got good real fast. We were up and at the bus stop at 7:45 am to take the bus to Gränna. When we got there around 9:00, we went into a Polkagrisar (Polkapigs) shop and bought a ton of Polkapigs!

We then headed to a dementia care home that was very home-like, calm and relaxing and it was a place I really enjoyed visiting. After that, we walked to the dock area and stopped into another Polkapig shop, this time to learn how to make them. Two people even got to go in and help do it! Afterwards, we had about 20 minutes to take pictures before catching the ferry to Visingsö. We took so many good pictures and hopefully I will get them off my friends’ computers soon and get them onto my picture album. We hopped onto the ferry and took about a 30 minute ride across the lake to Visingsö.

When we got there, we had a picnic lunch by the lake and then went and got bikes to begin our lovely ride. We biked about 3 km and stopped at the Kumlaby church, one of the oldest medieval churches in Sweden. We got to climb up these really steep, creaky and cave-ish stairs and went to the top for an amazing view and pictures.

After coming down and getting a few pictures of the inside of the church, we hopped back on our bikes and rode to an independent living home not too far away. It was a nice, brief visit and we were done early and had just over an hour to bike around the island. We decided to go to some castle ruins and even though we went to the wrong one (we went to the church ruins instead), we still had a good time and took so many great pictures again (once again, I’ll have to get them from others).

The old church ruins

I think we were trying to take a cute laughing picture

Sitting in the flowers/weeds

When our pyramid failed, we tried for other cheerleading stunts

We then met at a restaurant by the lake for dinner at 3:00 (yeah, a little early). We had home-cooked salmon casserole surrounded by mashed potatoes and the best chocolate cake dessert, with whipped cream and passion fruit ice cream. When we were down there, we had another 45 minutes to hang out and we just talked in the restaurant for a bit. Around 5:00 we jumped back on the ferry, then back on the bus and got home around 6:00 and now we are just relaxing and getting ready for our last full day as students in Jonkoping (since we leave early Friday morning for Stockholm).

We figure our legs will be so sore from biking tomorrow but it was well worth it! It was funny to see everyone in a row and every time a car would come by, we would all yell it out since me and a few others were like drunk-biking and going all in the middle of the road a lot!