Weekend Life....Winter in Stockholm

Winter in Stockholm, Sweden, December 2012.

Stockholm is beautiful at any time of year, but in winter, with snow covering the ground, buildings and trees, it is just magical (if a little chilly....-15°C/5°F when we visited at the beginning of December). Despite visiting Stockholm a few times now, I have never managed to visit Skansen, an open-air historical museum on the beautiful island of Djurgarden. This time I did. And it was stunning.

During the lead up to Christmas, Skansen hosts a traditional Christmas market where you can buy Christmas decorations, handicrafts, children's toys, wreaths and traditional Swedish festive foods such as glogg (mulled wine), sweets, pastries, cheeses, sausages and reindeer elk burgers*. Wandering around was wonderfully atmospheric: glistening icicles hung from the traditional buildings, freshly-fallen snow crunched underfoot, families danced and sang to Swedish carols around a Christmas tree, horse-drawn buggies clip-clopped by carrying children bundled up against the cold.....it was exactly the kind of white Christmas many Australians dream about experiencing at least once in their life. We are spending Christmas in rainy, grey, no-sign-of-snow London this year, so I feel especially fortunate to have experienced a few days in Stockholm: a magical, wintry wonderland.
 
*I had a little bite.....and felt terribly guilty when I had to face the majestic reindeer in the Nordic animal enclosure.

Weekend Life....Paris Rooftops

Bonjour Paris!

The view from the apartment I was renting in Paris, March 2012. It was the first (and only) sunny morning during the whole of PFW!

Weekend Life....Christmas in Provence, France

Christmas December 2011, Provence, France. in Menerbes

Last Christmas we rented a lovely house with good friends in Menerbes, a beautiful village in the Luberon region of Provence*. It was a wonderful holiday filled with delicious food sourced from the markets (every second day we would venture out to a different village to do our shopping), long afternoons spent in front of the fire, strolls into the village for coffee at the Cafe du Progres, morning drives along winding country roads (which resulted in some car sickness.....and it wasn't just the little kids that were affected! Plus one memorable drive where our passenger van ended up stuck down a ditch and which resulted in much shrugging of shoulders, oooph ooh-la-la-ing from the French gentleman who stopped to help us), a very special Christmas morning with lots of presents, giggles and champagne, and cold nights tucked up in our pajamas watching Arrested Development and Seinfeld. 

If you are wondering where to spend Christmas, I can highly recommend both Provence and the Dordogne region of France (we spent another Christmas with friends in Tremolat which was brilliant). Markets and supermarkets are open and (other) tourists are few and far between. The weather was beautiful (cold, crisp and clear) and accommodation is much more reasonably priced than in the peak Summer season.

We loved our Christmas in Provence!

*yes, that village made famous by Peter Mayle in his book A Year in Provence.

Weekend Life....Cape Cod

Cape Cod, Massachusetts, USA, September 2012.

 A collection of photos I took during our overnight stay in Cape Cod in early September.

p.s. With the tragic events of the last week that have changed and affected the lives of so many people on the East Coast of the United States, I wasn't quite sure whether to post these photos. But I figured that it is important to show what an incredibly beautiful country America is, particularly an area which has been impacted by Hurricane Sandy. My thoughts and prayers are with all those who have been affected, both in the US and the Caribbean, during this heartbreaking time.