Härnösand Tourism

This town boasts a grand total of two tourists attractions on Trip Advisor: a museum and a reconstructed cold war military post from the 1950s. Neither of these were particularly high on our to-do list, so instead we went out and explored some of the natural attractions. First: the beach.

Guess what surprised me about the beach? The level of frozen!

The sand was frozen as hard as concrete..

.. the chairs were frozen ..

.. the seaweed was frozen ..

.. but the water wasn't.

Hisham in his bathing suit

So I thought it might be fun to get a picture of me standing in the water. I mean, it's still liquid so how bad can it be, right? Really fun, guys, really fun. So fun. The kind of fun that I want to repeat every single day. Yeah. Way fun. It probably only took about 30 seconds for Hisham to get a photo through his triple-gloved hands but to me it felt like hours. So cold! So very very cold! I wisely wore sandals this day so had to use my gloves as socks in the van to try and get rid of the frostbite. How long does it take for extremities to start going black? I was beginning to get concerned.

On the way to our next stop it felt like we were driving through the set of an apocalyptic movie. Everything looked like it hadn't been touched in months, the trees were stripped, there were hardly any cars on the road, no people walking around, and no animal sounds to be heard. The sun, when it is there, is permanently either rising or setting; and night lasts from 3pm to 10am. In reality though of course Härnösand is a town full of life, it's just that that life is lived almost exclusively indoors.

Sunset at 1:40 pm. #nofilter (unless you count a foggy window)

Our next destination was the top of the town hill to check out the view which apparently is stunning. This is a hill which they close when it snows so you can snowboard down it - how cool is that! We got about half way up and then all of a sudden the car stopped moving and the wheels started skidding on the icy gravel. You know when the wheels are skidding and the car kind of slides to the side a tiny bit? That happened. I looked out the window and saw that the ground dropped down a nice steep bank, as is common with hills. We tried to go forward a couple more times but the only change was that we began to smell burning from the tyres. The car was full of tension with nobody really saying much which even Adam noticed and he uttered an entirely appropriate "uh-oh". I politely suggested that, "Perhaps we should all get out of the car so it's a bit lighter?" but what I really meant was "OH CRAP EVERYBODY GET OUT OF THE CAR WHILE YOU STILL CAN". So the guys got out and we two mums stayed in with our kids and we rolled down the hill a hundred metres until the slope was more gradual and there was a spot to turn. We were never in any real danger but it was enough to give me the heebie jeebies.

The apartment's industrial laundry which got six loads of washing clean and dry in five hours flat. 

We finally got all of our clothes clean at once, had some delicious dinner and indulged in some more of that wonderful activity - packing. Here's a nice photo of Adam reading himself a book to end with.

A rare enough event to warrant photographing.