Ringholmen (and a surgery update)

I'm having surgery tomorrow on my shoulder.  I don't know how long I'll be incapacitated, so this may be the last post for a while.

Tove's cousin, Eva, and her husband, Arnstein, invited us and 40 other people to spend the weekend at Ringholmen sjøhus.  Each of them wanted to celebrate their 65th-year birthdays, so they decided to celebrate in a big way!  So, the weekend after we returned from our vacation up north, we hopped onto the boat for the three and a half-hour trip south to the little rock of an island that holds the sjøhus.

See the boat that took us to Ringholmen?

Here is a close-up of the boat.  Oh.  You thought it was the ship in the background.  

The boat is very fast and smooth.  There is a cafe-snack shop on board.  The seating is similar to intercontinental airlines, but also with tables one can sit around.  We sat on the starboard side on the upper deck.  On the port side there sat a foursome around a table and they were having the best time!  They brought bottles of wine and canapes and they drank and laughed the whole way there.  We found out as we all got off at Ringholmen that they were among the 42 who had been invited for the weekend party!  They said had they known, they would have invited us to the pre-party party on the boat!

Eva greeted each boat as it arrived with guests.  The four who disembarked on this one, missed the Ringholmen stop on the trip South to Kristiansund.  They had the boat take them back on its return trip to Trondheim.

Eva acted as Front Desk reception and checked us each into our rooms.

Arnstein show us to our room

Years ago Ringholmen was an important fishing "station" and the fisherman dried cod here for export.

But now, its a sea-hotel used primarily by boaters traveling up and down the coast in Summer

The old sailboat docked is a vintage cutter about 100 years old.

The view from our room.

Dinner Friday 8:30pm.  We will meet at the hearth.  Breakfast Saturday 8 to 10a.m.  Lunch Saturday ... We hope that the weather allows us to have a BBQ out on a little rock-islet (weather permitting), and, if so, we will have boat transportation.  Dinner 8PM at the hearth.  Brunch Sunday 10 to 12.  We hope for a nice weekend together.

Eva and Arnstein. 

Friday night we dined casually in the huge dining area.  We ate a delicious bacalao.  The owner of the sjøhus gave an animated speech before dinner wherein he told the history of Ringholmen . . . beginning with pre-Viking times!  He is a gifted speaker, very entertaining, but it might have been a bit too long . . ..

The stone hearth and fireplace were enormous.

Those are tea-candles 

The owner stokes the fire.

Saturday, the weather was wonderful, and we took the boat to a neighboring little uninhabited rocky little island for the BBQ.  There were moose burgers, venison steaks, sausages, salad, beer, wine -- it was really fun, and delicious.  And the weather, oh it was superb:

En Route.  It took two trips to get everyone there in the old sailboat.

The powerboat delivered the food for grilling.

Some of the folks walked to the other side of the small bay-inlet to get a better view of the surroundings.

Others relaxed by the boat.

It was warm enough to go swimming.  The little bay was sandy bottomed and shallow.  The water temp was about 66.

Heather in the foreground.  The people on the left in the background are near the grill where there was plenty of food.

I wasn't the only one who went swimming.  Many did.

Grillin' n chillin'

The boat trip back to Ringholmen

Ringholmen

The Saturday night feast was unforgettable.  It was more formal and most men wore jackets and the ladies, dresses.  It was a seafood extravaganza.  The chef did a wonderful job of preparing, salmon, cod, haddock, saithe, halibut, crab, lobster, scallops in a variety of ways, including a delicious sashimi.  My brother once took me to the best seafood restaurant in Paris.  This was better.

A little dressy

  

But maintaining the maritime theme.

Our lovely, generous hosts.

And now, to bed.  Ready for surgery tomorrow.

The Outhouse

A post about an outhouse!  Yes.  One would think it would be difficult to build a charming outhouse.  This Swedish couple has clearly succeeded.  It is the only outhouse I have ever occupied that has a GUESTBOOK.  Without going into technical details, the Swedes have designed outhouses to be comfortable and absolutely odor-free.

Wash basin for after "the event"

Foam rubber eliminates the "ring of ice" that my parents remembered from their childhoods.

The window was high up to allow privacy.

The whole experience at the little cabin by the lake just south of Jokkmokk, Sweden was full of pleasant surprises.  One of the nice rewards of long-distance car trips is finding these little gems that you would never know about except for stumbling upon them along the road.  

Sauna

The cabin owners invited us to use their "bastu" (sauna).  We just needed to throw in some birch wood into the wood-stove, light the fire, wait for the sauna to get warm enough, and enjoy.  The bastu was located in the annex in the foreground left.  You can see the chimney for the woodstove that provides the heat for the bastu.

When you enter the annex you are greeted with this charming little "relaxation room" for want of a better term.

The door to the sauna was clearly labeled.

The fragrance in the sauna was reminiscent of a cedar-lined closet.

The wood-stove genereated tremendous heat

You couldn't beat the view.  It was a nice touch to have a window overlooking the lake.

It wasn't really dark.  I just exposed the photo based on the light from the fire.  The preceding photo is more accurate.

After hours and hours of driving, the relaxing experience of the sauna was truly wonderful.  As our Finnish friend, Jussi, says, "Sauna melts the muscles."  It was a nice end to the day.

Stuga II

After following the signs and parking the car we found the owner and her husband.  They live in the larger cabin during the summer.  In the winter, they live in Luleå, one of the larger towns in Northern Sweden on the Gulf of Bothnia.  The owner accepts only cash, so we asked her if we could pay her later after doing some grocery shopping back in Jokkmokk.  No problem.  She then invited us to use the sauna, if we wanted.  It was located in it's own little annex and it was a wood-fired sauna.  More on this later.

We bought groceries so we could make dinner that evening and breakfast the next morning.  When we returned to the cabin we found this:

"Fresh water.   We've gone into Jokkmokk.  My telephone number is xxxx."

This photo was taken from the deck that is right on the lake.  The owner spends her summer in the larger cabin in the center background.  In the foreground, left, is the sauna (more about that later).  In the background far right is our cabin.  The distance from the deck to the sauna is distorted by the wide-angle lens.  It's only about 30 yards.

Our cabin had a kitchen, tiny dinette, a small "living room" and a loft double bed.

Inside the cabin

The deck on the lake.  There was a firepit/bbq behind the wooden bench.

No wind today!

The view from our cabin toward the lake.

Those bushes are wild blueberry bushes!  There were berries everywhere.

Like I said, "no wind".

 

Late evening from our cabin