Sports holiday in Sweden

So the sports-holiday, spread over three weeks in february dependibg on where in Sweden you live, has come to an end for our family. As both me and my husband are teachers we get the privilige to spend school-holidays together with our kids :)

This week we spent a few days in Skåne in the south of Sweden (rain , rain, rain....) and a day in northern Germany, most of it in Timmendorfer Strand where we discovered a huge (at least it seemed huge from the outside) spa and waterland (ostsee therme & hotel - www.ostsee-therme.de)
, an aquarium (sealife), a lovely beach for walks this time of year and probably great for swimming during summer, and lots and lots of luxurious holiday-homes along the beach.

There are lot's of things to do with kids in Germany, amusementparks, water-palaces etc. and the prices are good, we got a full dinner with soda and desserts for our 3 kids and beer for the father for around 50 euro :)

I also tried to find some flea-markets in Skåne at the way home as it's known as a little flea-marjet kingdom here in Sweden, but most of the good ones are only open during weekends this time of year.
Although I did find some stuff further up north, some clothes and cute mini-drawer for my sons room.

I love vintage, retro and fleamarkets and often try to find them at our trips (guess my lucky reaction when i realized the street outside our hotel in Paris turned into a huge fleamarket every saturday ;), sometimes I find stuff sometimes I don't but the great thing is you don't look for certain things, cause you don't know what you are looking for until you find it!

That's why I looked around at home for some money today as I knew I was going to drive by a local fleamarket on the way to picking up my son. I found around 5 euro and came home with The Desperate Housewives cookbook (what a thing ;), a really goodlooking noteboard for our hallway and a really nice abc-book :D

Next school-holiday is right before easter, in april. It's ten days and I'd really like to go on a kid-friendly trip somewhere warner than here -it'll have to be a budget one though as i also want to finish renovating our house this spring and summer :p- so who knows, maybe I can give you some budget holidaytips afterwards!

I'm back!

So I've been away from blogging for a while but now i'm back taking care of the blog, keeping it updated :)

It hasn't been much travelling with (or without) kids lately, except for our annual visit to the christmas-fair/market at Liseberg (amusementpark) in Gothenburg, despite the weather we had a really nice day there at our daughters birthday.

Sharing some pictures of the typical green rabbits who live there and of the Paris-wheel and the cute little shops that appear at christmas in the park.

At the moment our family are planning a trip to LA next christmas, so if anyone of you readers out there have any family-friendly ideas about what to do, where to stay etc, please share in a comment below! Never been to the States so hopefully it'll be a dream vacation!

 

Hopefully we'll get to Dubai during 2014 aswell, we'll see ;) Looked into the Tamani ( i think tht was the name of it) hapartment hotel in Dubai Marina, seems like good value for not so much money!

Lunch in Stockholm

Went to Stockholm the other day and had the best lunch ever at Christinehof at Kungsgatan, recommended!
Great service, good food that makes you last for several hours, good prices and a cosy environment!

Sorry I haven't been around at Playing Around for a short while!

Part of the city of Mariestad where I live. Me and my husband got married in this church in 2009.


     Beautiful wievs and wonderful beaches, summertime this town is at its best :)



We've had so much to do on the house we're living in and redecorating so I haven't been able to find the time to work on the blog these last few days, but that changes from now on! Neither have I had the time to book our trip to Lisbon or a skiing-trip but I do have some propositions for you at what to do if the children are off school and youto have the day off - like our school-holiday next week.

Of course there is always things like going to amusementparks (that are open) or aqualands, but it gets quiet expensive if you've got a couple of kids like we do, and also it's fun and interesting to do something else.

My kids have npow reached the age when they all want to discover, and at the moment they love museums, not just the big "kid-friendly" ones, but also artmuseums (they choosed the Louvre in Paris themselves) and smaller museums like the ones about the city you're currently in or museums that specialize in a certain subject.

As we live in a small city there aren't very many museums around so we often go when we're at citytrips in Europe or visiting grandma and grandpa in Gothenburg, where you can visit about 5 museums how much you like for 1 year för around 4 euros. Children go for free up to the age of 18 :)
Many museums offer playareas with the theme of the museum, like "Sjöfartsmuseet" (= museum of  maritime) in Gothenburg, who's got a big ship for the children to play in at the top floor for example.

We also go to discover new tings in our own town, when we had a visitor from France and wanted to show him the city we went to the main church and discovered they had a little activity for kids in families who visited - there was a little brochure telling about different mice and through the stories of the mice the story of the church was told to the children while they tried to find all the mice . I love discovering things like that for the kids to do!

Strollers for travelling etc.

We are still looking in to a trip to Lisbon in Portugal and a skitrip here in Sweden over christmas, trying to find out the best place to go with children in different ages.

Next week there's a school-holiday here in Sweden, and asboth me and my husband are teachers, we havesome time off , which probably will spent on Astrid Lingrens Värld (The world of Astrid Lindgren, the author of Pippi Longstocking etc) and their autumn-fair.

At the momennt my computer is working really slow, don't know why but I'll do my best to keep the blog updated.
There will also be som list of blogs I'm following, what to pack for the kids on different holidays, good travelsystem-strollers etc.

I brought an Akta Graco Fusio Moon (italian brand) - stroller to Paris but it was a bit heavy and not so quick to fold - my absolute favourite -stroller for a vacation is BabyJogger City mini, you just pull a handle and it's folded, and maximum-weight of the child is nearly 30 kg - most smaller strollers have a maximumweight of the child of 15 kg, but my 3-year-old is heavier than that and need a stroller at holidays, preferably one that he can sleep in. I've also tried Bugaboo Bee Classic, great option if you have a smaller child or a  baby.

And of course ther is Yoyo - handluggage-size!


    Yoyo



Baby Jogger City Mini


                                                                             Bugaboo bee - this and the Orbit baby stroller seems to be the celebrities favourites!

Don't forget to have a photo of your pram, and the receipt aswell, if it gets broken while handled at the airports - and pack it well, there are great "Prampacks" etc to buy if you'd like, but you can also by a plasticbag at the airprt for around 2-4 euros.

Enjoying Gothenburg/Göteborg

Spending this weekend in my hometown with my three kids aged 10, 6 and 3. Here are lots of stuff to do with them but today we satisfied with a fleamarket and some shoeshopping followed by a visit at the playground.

Tomorrow though, we're going to their absolute favouritemuseum, Universeum! (www.universeum.se), were they will get the chance to meet and pet a real snake, watch sharks, experience space and much much more. This museum is not a budgetpleasure, costs about 50 euros for a family but it's worth every penny, Ivpromise! We usually stay for several hours, cause their is so much to see, do and learn. And i know there are some guidetours/activities in english too ;)

Also there are good picknick-areas at top and groundfloor if you want to bring your own food, the last one accompanied with a playground for the youngest when they need a break from all the exciting animals, experiments etc.

If you prefer to buy lunch at the museum there's a good and child-friendly restaurant with food for all ages, even babyfood!

Lisbon, portugal & the living lounge

Got a very positive reply fr.o.m. The hostel I told you about earlier, children are more than welcome to stay and as for us, a family with three kids, they said they'd put in an extra babybed in a 4-bed-room at the same cost as 4 people :)

First impression:really good! Serviceminded staff and the Roms look grat standard fr a hostel, and our kids are big enough so shared bathroom in corridor won't be a problem.

Budget accomodation like this makes us beeing able to travel a lot more than we should be able to at our salary, so i'm always really happy to find them!

This weekend me and my kids are staying at my parents' in Gothenburg so we'll have a lot to do and report when we get back!