Sweden for a Day

With the long weekend, we decided to take a day trip across the (expensive) bridge to Sweden.  We got an early start and headed over to visit a place called Ales Stenar or Ale's Stones.
 

 Castle and church on our way to Ale's Stenar.

 Dating 1400 plus years ago, the Vikings set up a ring of stones in the shape of a boat.  It's overlooking the sea on a high cliff and was just very striking. 

 The site was located on a high hill over looking the sea.  There was a nice path up to it, but on the way down, we decided to be a bit more adventurous and took this livestock trail down the cliff-side.  It was very steep, the picture doesn't really do it justice.  We were really glad we went back this way though, there were no people and it was just really beautiful.

 Kid's have always got to look for sea glass and fossils.

 After leaving the sea side, we headed to Glimmingehus, the best preserved medieval strongholds in Scandinavia.  The over 500 year old building was built to withstand any siege, complete with tiny windows, "murder holes", false doors, dead-end corridors, moat, drawbridge and other forms of defense.  It was a fun walk-through.  Not a huge tourist attraction, so we could spend a lot of time really wandering through the place.  They tout the location as been haunted, so the kids were a little leery at first, but when we started taking our own "ghost pictures", they really loved it.

 I really need to get a set of these to have around the house.

 Ghost picture.

 After leaving the castle, we made our way up the coast to Stenshuvud National Park.  The name means Sten's Head, referring to the legend of a Giant living in the area.  Although nothing like the Utah and Colorado mountains we grew up with, it was so nice to actually go "hiking" with an incline through the woods.  It was such a beautiful area.

 Lexi walking along the walls of the remains of a 5th century fortress.

I'm not sure how well this picture shows it, but there were these moss-covered stones all over the place and they looked just like the trolls from the movie Frozen.