Leaving Lund.

I left Lund on June 9th 2014 after possibly the best 6 months of my life. I absolutely fell in love with Sweden and Scandinavia in general. The city of Lund was historic and beautiful, I loved every minute of cycling around, meeting friends for fika and travelling. I met some of the most interesting, kind, thoughtful, inspirational and wonderful people during my time there and I miss them all every single day. My plan at the moment is to apply for Masters programmes in Sweden so I may be back there in the not too distant future but I thought I would just share some of the photos taken by the ridiculously talented Paul Carleton, they are of my brilliant friends and my last day in Lund. 

Celebrating Swedish National Day with meatballs and lingonberry jam. Starting from the left we have Antonia, Amy, Michael, me and Paul.

The awesome dinner party Esbe and Paul threw for us all. Starting with me and working left we have Amy, Lucy, Michael, Maxime, Antonia, (someone I don't recognise), Matt, Barney, Marie, Dennis, (two more people I don't know), Flavia, (another mystery guest) and Esbe!  

Amy, Esbe and me on my balcony on my final day in Lund, just before I headed off to the airport. How beautiful are they!?

Thank you to everyone I met for making my time in Sweden so magical. I hope I will meet you all again some day soon!

Iceland - The Golden Circle.

Well, this post is extremely late but I thought I would share some photos of a trip I took to Iceland with my Lund friends Lisa, Natalja and Martina. We went at the start of June when it was light pretty much 24h a day which was quite strange. As I am writing this post almost 7 months later I will mostly leave it to the pictures to describe Iceland. It was very different to anywhere I have ever been and definitely had a hardy, Nordic, fisherman feel to it - combined with the luna-esque landscape, black sandy beaches and geothermal springs you could almost believe you were on a different planet! 

Our first stop was Þingvellir national park - part of Iceland's famous Golden Circle. It is the site of a rift valley that marks the crest of the Mid-Atlantic Range. It is also home to Pingvallatan , the largest natural lake in Iceland. Þingvellir became a national park in 1928 due to its historical importance as the site of the first Parliament, as well as the special tectonic and volcanic environment as a rift valley. The continental drift between the North American and Eurasian Plates can be clearly seen in the cracks or faults which traverse the region, the largest one, Almannagjá, being practically a canyon. This also causes the often-measurable earthquakes in the area.

Next we headed over to Geyser - the geothermal fields where steam and boiling hot water rises eerily out of the ground. Iceland has high rates of volcanic activity, geysers and hot springs are located all over the island. The geyser erupts every 5-10 mins and it is pretty impressive to see!

The final stop in the Golden Circle is Gullfoss - a huge three tier waterfall. The water falls 32 meters in two stages through the canyon and on sunny days has an almost permanent rainbow above it due to all the spray. The pictures don't capture just how powerful it was! 

A failed day in Helsingborg.

The next day, we got up early with big plans of heading to the coast and seeing Helsingborg and Helsingor. There had been a huge storm the night before, the wind and the rain were blowing so loud I thought the windows would cave in! So it was a pleasant surprise to wake up to a cold but clear day, I made a cooked breakfast and we headed in to Lund to catch the train…

This is where things started to go wrong, we got a bit too distracted looking around the centre of Lund and so by the time we made it to the station time had ticked on and it was already mid day. No matter, the journey to Helsingborg only took about 40 mins so we would still have the day to explore before catching the ferry over to Helsingor and checking out the wondrous Hamlets castle (Kronborg Castle). However… on arriving at the station we began to realise the storm had caused more damage than we thought. Trains were delayed left, right and centre, so we were advised to take the replacement bus service to Malmo and try from there. Once in Malmo we bought tickets for a train leaving in about half an hour and had a quick bite of lunch before heading to the platform, and then changing platform, again  and again and again. The platform changed at least 3 times so we ended up running around like headless chickens before finally getting on the train (which then took another 20 minutes to leave the station). By this time I was stressing out and sure enough, by the time we got to Helsingborg all the attractions had closed, the sun had gone and nothing was going to plan. 

I wasn't in the greatest of moods by the time we arrived and found Helsingborg a bit rundown and underwhelming. It did have some pretty places though and I am sure I would have liked it a lot more if we had got there earlier and I had been in a better frame of mind!

On the steps up to the castle there were these little stone sculptures which reminded me of iced gems.

The only thing we managed to see was the Sankta Maria Kyrka, a red brick chapel with a nautical theme running through it. 

It was pretty but I was still disappointed we didn't make it to Helsingor or even Sofiero Castle and Gardens in Helsingborg. This cheeky sign on the train home cheered me up a bit though…

Oh well.