Holiday 2012

In 2011 we had a wonderful visit from our little Swedish family and at the beginning of 2012 Elin and Jim started a big push to get us to travel to Sweden and see their new apartment. Jim encouraged us to stay for longer than last time.

When we did the England, Sweden trips in in 2007 and 2009, I followed them up with a series of blogs exactly a year later, or as close as possible. This way I was getting double the pleasure from the holiday and reliving very happy memories, so here we go again.

Early January and after the decision was made that we would make the trip once again, the first thing to do of course was to check our passports.  Good job we did as Di's was out of date. About a month later and the new shiny passport arrived, having cost the staggering amount of $230.00.

Once the news leaked out that we were planing to travel to England again, our wonderful family jumped in with ideas and offers of accommodation.  We would like to be in the UK in May so that I could share my birthday with Ray once again, and possibly with Elin also.  Rays birthday was another incentive to make the trip this year, but more of that closer to the date.

We had a terrific offer of accommodation from Jane and Glynn who had just moved into a new house.  The house has three floors and Jane set the top level aside for our use and also said that she could put Elin and Jim up if necessary as Emma and John would be at Uni.  We were a little unsure about this, not Janes generosity but the fact that she and Glynn are very busy people and have to travel two hours each way to work.

After a lot of thought and planning we arrived at the following plan.  We would fly directly to Sweden, staying for just a week to see Johan and drop off some of our heavy clothing.  Fly to England for approximately a month, Elin and Jim to join us for a week and then we would return to Sweden for another two months.  Its a long time to be away but Jim says he has plenty of jobs to be done in the new apartment which will keep me busy!

At the beginning of February  2012, we went to see our favourite travel agent and set the wheels in motion.  By this time last year everything was sorted, flights, seat allocations, car hire and even a baby seat for Johan. All documentation should be ready to pick up this time next month.