15 days to departure - but where are we going?

Since it is now only 15 days before we depart for Sweden I thought I should publish a blog about our schedule - where we are going and when we will be there.

We leave Edinburgh airport on Friday 1st November. We will be catching the afternoon flight to Amsterdam from where we will travel on to Stockholm arriving in the early evening. 

If anyone is thinking of coming to wave us off please be there at 10.30am otherwise we might have gone through passport control and into the Duty Free shop!

Upon arrival in Stockholm we will be met by our coach and transported to Uppsala - a journey of about an hour. Here we will book into a hotel for 2 nights and attend a Welcome Buffet.

We will have 2 games of curling on Saturday 2nd November. A couple of my curling friends have a son that lives in Uppsala so I hope he will pop along with his family to watch and cheer us all on.

Sunday 3rd November looks like a long day. We first of all travel northwards for just over an hour to Gavle where we will have lunch followed by a game of curling. We then take to the road again and head south westwards to Karlstad. This is a 4 hour plus journey but is broken up by us stopping for dinner somewhere along the way. When we reach Karlstad we will go to the homes of the Swedes who are kindly hosting us for 2 nights.

On Monday 4th November we play 2 games of curling and don't travel anywhere. This almost sounds like a rest day!

Tuesday 5th November sees us on the move again this time to Jonkoping (about a 3 hour journey roughly southwards). Once there we have lunch and a game of curling before dinner and a night in a hotel.

We start Wednesday 6th November with a game of curling in Jonkoping before having lunch and then moving on to Norrkoping (approximately 2 hours north eastwards). Here we again will be hosted by locals for 2 nights. The schedule we have received from Sweden indicates that there will be  welcome party and dinner in the Arena. This sounds like fun.

Thursday 7th November starts will a guided tour, lunch and then 2 six end games of curling before a light dinner.

On Friday 8th November we head back to Stockholm (surely our tour is not nearly over already?!). This should be around a 2 hour journey still in a north easterly direction. Then there is planned a surprise activity with dinner to follow.

Saturday 9th November sees us playing our last 2 games of curling before attending a dinner organised by the Swedish Curling Association. This will definitely be a chance for us to wear our 'posh frocks' and blazers.

We have allowed ourselves a free day on Sunday 10th November so we can get to see a bit more of Stockholm and treat ourselves to a nice meal (anyone know a good restaurant for us to go to?). 

We leave Sweden on the morning flight to Amsterdam and arrive back in Edinburgh at 4.00pm. No doubt tired but happy and hoping that the friends and family who have agreed to pick us up and take us home have not forgotten about us!

Our tour route - we go in an anti-clockwise direct form Stockholm