Day 7: Mid-summer's Day

Today was mid-summer's day, so a lot of shops and restaurants were closed, not to mention all of the museums. We purposefully picked a few activities that wouldn't be closed today, though they did depend on good weather. The forecast for today was rain (actually, that has been the forecast every day, but luckily it has only rained a little bit every day and then cleared up). We didn't see a drop of rain all day, which was very fortunate.

Since Nuri was still feeling under the weather and we were a bit tired, we took the tram into town for our laziest activity yet: a boat tour of Gothenburg. The boat tour was very fun and gave us a great view of many of the lovely buildings on the waterfront and some great ships too. We also had the pleasure of getting on our hands and knees to go under the "cheese-slicer," one of the extremely low bridges that separates the harbor from the canals. On the way back into the canals, we again got down and ducked to go under the "hair-stylist" (you need one if you don't duck low enough).

We came home for a bathroom break, some lunch, and to borrow some warmer clothes (sadly, I accidentally left my Cal hoodie at the Stockholm airport). We headed out again to Slotskoggen park, this time with intentions of seeing the animals. They have a "zoo" inside the park but it is really unlike any zoo I've ever seen. We didn't have to pay admission or anything and the animals are all in these wide open spaces with small fences. All of the animals were suited to the Swedish climate (no gorillas) and all animals were outdoors. We saw goats, sheep, peacocks, horses, and swans. But the three moose that took us a while to locate, including a recently born baby moose, were the highlight of our trip to the zoo. The zoo is one large loop, with all kinds of steep hills and valleys, so we got a good workout pushing Nuri around the entire circle. Poor sick Nuri slept through the entire zoo visit and just as we were about to leave, he opened his eyes, saw a goat, and said, "baaa." But we found some ducklings on the way out of the park, and that was just as good, as far as he was concerned.

We came home and hung out and relaxed for a while. Cindy, Anders, and Megan had taken Liam to the airport and Liam wanted a last supper at his favorite fast food joint, so Cindy made us some lovely French toast out of some special bread she bought at the market. We have watched a lot of Looney Tunes today. Immediately upon entering the house Nuri wants us to turn it on. He's still pretty fussy and just this afternoon he still had a high fever, but the Tylenol made it go away and it still hasn't come back, though the Tylenol has long warn off. Tomorrow evening we leave for Brussels. We're going to do our best to keep posting in Belgium, although it appears we will have more limited internet access, at least for a few nights. Stay tuned.