Our summer vacation to Dalarna 2009 - a little late :-)

We went to see how the world famous Dalahorse are made in the small community of Nusnäs right next to the lake Siljan. The horses became a symbol of Sweden and can be seen around the world as all IKEA stores have one. They are hand crafted from one piece of wood and finally painted for hand in beautiful colors; the original is falu red, made from copper from the great copper mine in Falun.
The kids got to follow the whole process real close from the first piece of wood to the final product. The horses came in all sizes from 1 cm to 5 m. We had the fortune to witness a 50 cm horse get painted in 10 minutes without making a wrong paint stroke by a worldclass craftsman. The kids got to pick their own miniature dalahorse. Elias went for the black and Ida for the pink. Olivia as always went her own ways and bought a light blue horse.

Tuesday the 21st of July we went to visit Santa World in Dalarna. This is a park filled with fairytales, trolls, Santa’s helpers, a witch and other creatures from the woods.
The adventure started when we entered the park with the adventure of Santa’s helpers that had taken Santa’s Power bole, the kids were involved in the story and loved it. The play took place throughout the park and the kids where following the characters around, especially Santa’s 2 meter tall elf were the kid’s favorite.
The story went on for 4 acts throughout the day; the kids could almost not wait until the adventure continued.
The kids also got to se Santa’s house, his workshop and the troll’s house. They also learned to speak troll language. The girls also had a secret class of witch craft and did not want to tell us anything about it, since they swore secretsy to the witch; I was amazed how good they were to not talk about it. Elias was too afraid to go into the witch’s house.
The woods creatures were to see all around the park and they were talking with the kids in between their part in the fairytale.

Wednesday 22nd July, Naturum treasure hunt. The weather had not been too kind but Wednesday was pretty fair all things considered. We drove 25 miles to the southern edge of Lake Siljan, to go on a nature treasure hunt for the kids. The view across Siljansnäs and Leksand was beautiful from the ground, but from the 50 m tower is was glorious. The kids had great fun running around looking for clues, and after half an hour they were rewarded with a pierce of fake gold and a handwritten letter. The rest of the day was spent being lacy in the garden of the cottage, playing games and eating candy.

Every year the small town of Rättvik is transformed into car lovers heaven, during ‘Classic Car week’. Hundreds of classic cars from the 1920s and onwards fill the streets. A lot of the drivers dress up in authentic clothes and hairdo. It hardly mattered that it rained a bucket. Ida started counting the cars, but stopped at 100. And this was only the first day of a weeklong bonanza.
Olivia was especially thrill over the petit camping home.