On every trip that lasts more than a few days there inevitably comes a time when you need a bit of a sleep in. And our second day in Uppsala was designated 'rest-day'. Now this of course doesn't mean we did nothing.
After our lazy start we headed in to town, our first stop being the Uppsala Cathedral. The giant three spired beast in the middle of town.
I was eagar to finally show Laura. She had seen the many images of the building adorning my parent's walls.
Now I know that at Europe is full of cathedrals, and I also know that one can quickly become 'out- cathedralled', but there is still something so magical about stepping into the huge open space, being hit by a wall of silence, and a barrage of ornate religious paraphernalia.
The church is 130m long and 130m tall, which not only makes it pleasantly as tall as it is long, but also makes it the largest Cathedral in Scandinavia!
We lit out candles and wanderers around taking in the magnificent building. I remembered there is a headless statue of Saint Lars, so we found him and had a laugh, wishing that he wasn't behind a wall of metal bars. Think of the great photo it would make if I could only perch my head atop the marble.
Our next stop was just up the hill - the Uppsala Castle. Sitting pretty in pink looking out over the city. We didn't feel too much like visiting the art gallery inside so we just wandered the grounds for a while.
Eventually we came the the townward side if the castle, and stopping to take some photos I heard a strange tapping sound.
For some reason I recognised the noise, having not actually heard it before; it was a woodpecker.
Tap tap tapping at the top of the tree we were under. We marvelled at this new animal, and I tried desperately to remember the information I read once about how they don't give themselves concussion.
After our two main attractions it was time to walk around town. And that's pretty much all we did for the afternoon. We managed to score an amazing crystal snowball candle holder from a secondhand store, which was the highlight of our town walking.
The sun went down and we started to think it might be time for dinner soon. We decided to walk back, grab the car and head about 20mins south to what I believe is still the Archipelago, as aposed to a lake in its own right.
I was envisioning something maybe like the Taupo waterfront. But when we arrived as something more like the Kai Iwi Lakes we realised our search for food had been thwarted.
This left us with a choice; either we head back to town, or we look up somewhere on the way back. We opted for the latter. I typed 'food' into the GPS and we headed off. As we neared the destination the roads became a bit tricky, confusing roundabouts and free turning made for some interesting 'floor it' moments. Eventually we came to our destination - it was not.
We realised the GPS took us to the wrong street number, so we drove back up the road.
However as we neared what we saw now was our actual destination we realised that we were on the motorway onramp... So away we went, five or so kilometres down the road, just to turn around and come back.
Now in those 10km we got talking. Our food place was suspiciously not in a foody area. We suspected our food place might in fact be some kind of catering supply store... We were right. No food, just shiny metal food warmers and sneeze guards.
We opted for the Asian plane next door to the IKEA. An quiet end to a quiet day!!
Pointy building!
Inside the pointy building!
Laura finally got PRINCESS CAKE!!!
We found the heated bench.
And Laura loved it!!
Labels: Sweden 2017
