Christmas, Chrimbo, Wigilia.

I am obviously a little late.... like only a month or so.... ok, maybe two. But Christmas posts by everyone in the world are now over, so only the lazy are available to give you such pleasures. Enter me!

The drive back in -20C

Plenty of snow in the east, and cat prints.

It looks so clean and crisp

trails in the snow

action man in tracksuit pants. Funnily enough they are called dres in Polish. Not so manly....

Look at the snow fly

slowly making a dent

it must be lunch time, the sun is going down.

night lights

The ol' Chrimbo tree

The day was too much for some.

All Christmasy creative

Don't forget the annual gingerbread house.

The most amazing gingerbread loaf with blackcurrant jam filling! Yum!

The sweet quartet. Gingerbread loaf, and gingerbread house, right is a cheesecake and centre is a plum and pudding cake.

Sorry it was late. Next I am sure New Years will pop up!

Hitting the Gborg streets - Saluhall

After our quick bite to eat it was off for a whistle stop tour of Gborg. The team Cooper was about to lose a member so it was the Aussies and a token Pole along for the ride to check out the sites in what looked like it would be a wet morning. So, I got in early and suggested we hit up the food hall Mr Cooper had told me about. I am ALWAYS excited about food markets. I wonder how efficient the Swedes can run food....

Time to Get a Grip

I don't know what it says but a nice way to write up the menu

As you know, we love a market

Let's tour the old Saluhallen

There is a hustle and a bustle

My crabs turned mutant!

Fish, I like

Salmon, to me, looks better in black and white

Saft through it.

Prawns are us. 119SEK, 45PLN, 17.80AUD, 13Euro, 18.90USD, 11.50GBP a kilo. Yum.

Wildlife meats.

I love Swedish thin bread tradition

Merengue, always look better than they taste

Sweet breads

Snack attack

Marzipan cups

Lasagne with salad and a coffee for $10AUD, the place to eat in Gotenburg. Hence the crowd.

Kid love

Oh cheese, how I adore thee

Mmmm more cheese

It's quality, the sign says so.

Kok bar, attracts the right type

Kok and delicately

Fish shops in Sweden smell sweet

Makes a man wonder

How great berries are.

And how much more expensive they are in Sweden. 25SEK is 11PLN here in Poland we would pay between 4-10PLN per kilo of strawbs, a punnet of rasps is about 5PLN and for blueberries about 4PLN. You know where the bargains are!

My favourite mushroom Chanterelle here at 68PLN/kg here is about 20PLN/kg!!

So, we can see Sweden has some fantastic produce, yes it is more expensive in Sweden than Poland. To put it in context though their GDP per cap. is $47,934 and Poland's is $12,300 so comparatively speaking Sweden is a bargain compared to Poland in this case! Hmmm, tough choice of where to live now.....

Little Belgium, Veurne

So the town of Veurne is to be found just inland from the South coast of Belgium, not too far from the French border. To be honest it really is a little jewel in the countryside. We just went here on our way back from running our fingers through sand and shells at the seaside. We are certainly glad that we did. Marta loved to be thought of as a local by a French car passing by as they failed to see her camera, guidebook and bewildered look, they continued to ask her the way to... well, somewhere, and she just smiled and said sorry, it was a cute scene.
The town has a rather imposing clocktower overlooking the main square.
It stands proud amidst the beautiful buildings which were luckily not destroyed in WWI in this part of the lowlands.
Around the square you can see some Renaissance buildings and the town hall. It really is a very pretty central square, to my mind, the prettiest in Belgium.
This is the town hall, it has a nice tower that you can climb I think, but we never got the chance.
I did like the ornate building tops and the small differences that you can see in each building due to its different uses and owners.
We were there when there was some lovely low afternoon sun and it let us play in the sun and shadows.
Of course being a nice and old town, it allowed me a good door fix to feed my addiction.
There were many interesting doors. After some of the towns I didn't think I would see such old ones. As many of the towns in the region were so devastated by WWI that it seems they just used more modern doors and materials and didn't seem to put the craftsmanship into them. So I was very happy to come here and see some nice doors.
The town also had a lovely bakery, the blurry blonde was an added free extra.
They had some delicious looking desserts to scoff down.
Apples appear to pop up a lot in this region too.
See I told you so.
The Raspberries looked too nice to be real! Unfortunately Marty and I had already eaten so we didn't lavish each other with icing sugar covered treats.
But my biggest question is are the pink things here a Belgian copy of the Adelaide classic,
Frog cakes? They look similar but of course the Adelaide Balfours treat is just a distant memory now..... Luckily if I need a fix of home, here in Poland two metro stops away I can buy a decent Lamington.