The Princess Papers, Part 5

As promised, the princess toothbrushes!

The trip home was a long one, the princesses are good travellers, however, really putting up with all sorts of stuff.

It rained the day we packed up - cats and dogs, as the saying goes. The garden sure needed it, but it was the pits carrying stuff to the cars.

We drove to Ystad, home of the Henning Mankell mystery stories, and wanted to see the museum in the cloister there. The cafe published in the ads was just that: a pot of coffee and some cookies. PrincessDaddy and I dashed to the nearest grocery store, loaded up on bread, cheese slices, meat slices and apples, and we just sat down, ignoring the signs about not eating your own food. We at least all had a coffee and a soda pop.

The museum was, well, as PrincessDaddy put it: The Swedes have a knack for throwing a bunch of old garbage together and calling it a museum. Couldn't have said it better myself! The church itself was closed for a wedding, so we ventured outside. It had stopped raining, so we tried to do a shopping tour of Ystad. But since they were in the process of rolling up the sidewalks, we could only window shop.

So we took off for Ales Stenar, a Stonehege-like place not far away. The princesses did a great job climbing up the hill, but were mystified at what the stones were for. They found it more fun to bug PrincessMommy by pretending to fall down the cliff and to be calling to the cows. But when the cows decided to come see what all that calling was about, P3 literally crawled up on PrincessDaddy's head, she was so scared.

We drove along the coast to Trelleborg, now with gorgeous weather, to decamp at a sweet little bed-and-breakfast, because people didn't think they could sleep on a boat. So we walked through Trelleborg and went to eat at a Sushi restaurant. The owner was so delighted at having kids, and asked me eagerly if these were my grandchildren. GRRRRRRR! Did I get old that fast? Yes, we do look a lot like each other. But he's my BROTHER, not my son, although I did rather like to pretend he was my baby when I was 12.

We went for ice cream at a wonderful place that had unbelievable ice cream flavors: licorice, violets (I got this, it was WONDERFUL), pomegranate, banana and red beet (!), I can't remember them all. I shall have to go back!

The rooms were nice, the kids slept great, but the matresses were horrible and the adults didn't sleep much. So the adults were rather cranky in the morning. We had hired a cabin on the boat for the kids to take naps in, but it pretty much ended up being the adults who were taking the naps!

The boat has one playroom for kids, a slide with balls in a pen, like at IKEA. 10 minutes, max, said PrincessDaddy. He was wrong. They spent the ENTIRE trip of 6 hours, sliding up (!) and down that slide, swimming in the balls, throwing the balls, getting hurt and crying, and then carrying on. There was spaghetti for lunch, while we were waiting P2 looked over at the truck drivers at the next table and remarked: oh look, they are playing crazy eights. Nooooo, Princess, that was a Bavarian set of cards, I bet they were playing Schafkopf....

They went to bed when we got home, were up early for the flight home with not a whimper. The place is so quiet now that they are gone, I'm going to miss them!