A new day, a new story.

This has day been I suppose the least exciting. No ferries, no Jersey cows, no borders. I decided to have brecker at the hotel. The meal last night was nothing to blog home about but the staff, mainly young women barely out of their teens were delightfully polite and smiley. Breakfast inclded crisp streaky bacon (5*) rather insipid scrambled eggs (3*) and very crisp and tasty brownish rolls (4*). Coffee claimed to be eco (whatever that means) but was extremely meh (2*). I assumed there would be a large ransom demanded for liberating this nosh, but one of the angelic staff said no charge.

Got in my car. I have an inclination to use 2 separate satnavs. The one provided by the car, which is rather out of date and consistently over-optimistic, because it has abolished traffic. I call it Boris. Not affectionately. The other one is in my phone and furnished by Google. Domineering in tone, up to the minute and convinced it is right. I call it Elon.

On this occasion when I got to the exit of the car park, Elon (very improbably) said go left and Boris said go right. Broke the habit of a lifetime and believed Boris. Started well, but got complicated. I had avoided Elon's idea because of the rally stage yesterday. Boris had suggested there was no party that way, but as it turned out it had 5 times a worse rally stage. At one point a sign said cul de sac., but I was brave, and after a while it improved. I was feeling triumphant. Until I realised the building on my left was the hotel I had left 20 minutes earlier. on my right. No real choice but to go with Elon and I ended up where this adventure started yesterday.

Time to have proper look at this enormous lake. It turns out to be called Vattern and is the second largest in Sweden and the 6th largest in the world. ANother page on Wikipedia says it's 6th equal largest in Europe and out of the top 20. I don't care: it is huge and has a good sized island in the middle to which they were sending ferries (can't avoid them).

My trip today was less than 4 hours (excluding the morning shenanigans) and took it easy, going up the side of the lake. Turns out there are dozens of lakes in Sweden, and eventually I made my hotel.

Brand new hotel, no services, no restaurant or bar but a gym and a shared kitchen with nothing in it except a fridge with something malodorous (maybe a mackerel ugh).

Went for a stroll and dinner in big Stockholm.

Big.old, lots of people, lots of restaurants and cafes.

Was looking for a car park but found this

I will campaign for something similar in Brentford.

This feller is supposed to be Gustavo Erici but apparently he is Gustav Ericson. Or perhaps Gustav Vasa. Something about a vase. I'm tired and confused by WIkipedia https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Vasa_(staty)

More Stockholm for me tomorrow then an overnight ferry to Helsinki. It may be a day to have a day off or no IT on the ferry, who knows.

Oh. Sweden has a lot of trees too

Trillions of pines or whatever everywhere even on rally stages.

Tired tonight. See you both soon xx