Sweden

On the first day of our trip, we took the train from Copenhagen across the Øresund Sound to Malmö, Sweden, where we rented a car. Then we drove for hours through beautiful Swedish countryside. It was a lovely drive. We stopped to admire a rune stone. Eventually we got to our hotel on the outskirts of Stockholm.

Stockholm was great. On Day Two we saw several museums, toured the Old City Hall (where the annual Nobel Prize ceremonies are held) and the Royal Palace, visited churches and so on.

We got on the move again on Day Three, first striking north to Uppsala, where we visited the University and had a wonderful private (because no other tourists showed up) guided tour of the castle. Then we motored all the way down to Nynäshamn and took a ferry to the island of Gotland.

We drove all over Gotland on Day Four, from the "raukar" stone formations to the beautiful UNESCO World Heritage site of Visby's medieval town walls, various ruined cathedrals and cute quaint whitewashed churches and thatched-roof cottages.

On Day Five, we took another ferry from Visby to Oskarshamn, then drove on to Kalmar, where we toured the castle that served as headquarters for the Kalmar Union that intermittently united Sweden, Denmark and Norway. We also had an excellent lunch at a fish restaurant on the harbor. Then another couple hours' driving brought us back to Malmö, where it was raining - the first time on the whole trip that we hadn't seen perfect weather.