So my mom and I arrived here in Bureå a week ago, after a few days of driving and sight-seeing through this beautiful country. Unfortunately, I didn’t take very many pictures on those days, but I may poke through my mom’s flickr one of these times and choose some to share here. We saw a lot of really great things every single day, and I really ought to have recorded them better.

The first two days we were in Uppsala, where we visited, among other things, Uppsala Castle with its sixteenth-century dungeons and the treasury at Uppsala Cathedral, which houses a number of astonishing and astonishingly well preserved artifacts that are centuries and centuries old. On our our way out of town, we stopped by Gamla Uppsala, where we got a terrific tour through the church and walked along the burial mounds of ancient kings. Despite all the time I’ve spent in Uppsala the past couple of years, I hadn’t visited any of those places before, and I’m glad I finally got the chance to do it in the company of someone who appreciated them every bit as much as I did.

After leaving Uppsala, we mostly meandered along in a homewardly direction, stopping at a couple of flea markets and visiting this and that café when the mood struck us. We did make time for a leisurely trip through IKEA in Sundsvall, but otherwise kept the shopping to a minimum. Our last night on the road we spent in Örnsköldsvik, where we had this gorgeous view of the harbor outside our hotel-room window:

Since we’ve been home, the kids have been basking in my mom’s presence, talking her ear off and showing off all their various treasures. And, of course, they’ve gotten plenty of new goodies to add to their troves. The best treasure of all, though, is surely a whole month of Onock.