Actually Travelling, kinda

Six days since my last post! I hope you all have gotten your mediocre blog fix elsewhere for the last week. I figured it would be wise to avoid dousing my audience with diluted material. And really, what good is a travel blog if the blogger never travels?

This Saturday I went for a long bike ride, some 17 miles round trip, to a small town called Holmsund on the Gulf of Bothnia, which is part of the Baltic Sea. One of the northernmost cities lying on the coast of the northernmost arm of the Baltic Sea. That's how far up I am. Seventeen miles might not sound like a long bike ride to some of you, but when roads aren't clearly marked and you don't have a map, the back brakes on your bike don't work and you haven't fully inflated the tires for several weeks, it makes for an interesting ride. Luckily it was a completely rural route and probably the last nice day of the year.

Perfectly empty and perfectly straight for several miles.

I huffed and puffed to my destination. Holmsund was not very impressive, but it did have a lot of off the beaten trails leading to beautiful water/island vistas:

Ski jump, and lunch spot.

End of trail on remote island, awesome picnic spot.

View from picnic spot.

Sadly, there's no direct shoreline accessible for the Gulf of Bothnia from Holmsund, but these little inlets are probably much more scenic anyway. The ride home was calmer, probably because I knew where I was going, and sunnier, probably because I wished it so. I climbed a hill a few miles from downtown Umeå and this was the view (I like views):

City to the right, one-runway airport to the left.

I think the hill I was on was actually just a former landfill. Can landfills ever be 'former' landfills? Once a landfill, always full of garbage. This is the longest caption I've written yet.

The rest of the day was spent recovering, exploring some shops downtown, and enjoying this beer.

It's so majestic.

Yeah, it was a pretty good day.

Skål!

Bonus:  Saw this in a small movie shop. 99 kronor is about 15 USD, for the Lion King 3? Not even the original, which has to be more valuable. And when did they make a third one, or was this just a special Swedish Lion King 3? I mean of course I can find out, but making you guys read my speculation is more fun.

I bet Billy Crystal learned Swedish just for the voice-over in this release. That guy is committed to his craft.