Visby, Sweden (II)

Friday | June 24, 2016

After breakfast in the apartment, I went to the gym to stretch, preparing for my day on the golf course. Today’s round was at Visby Valkommen Halsbanan.

Although the course was not as strong as the one we played two days ago, it was beautiful. But unfortunately, the weather was not cooperative. We were greeted with heavy winds, and then about 70 minutes of rain. Unfortunately, the golf pro had removed the umbrella from my cart. And more unfortunately, I had neither a rain suit, vest, jacket, nor sweater. So I played in the rain with no cover. By the 13th hole, the sun came out and it was once again a beautiful course.

Wildlife may have been the theme of the day as we saw cows, goats, swans, and geese on the course – yes, goats.

Unfortunately, I did not see any birdies….

Back on the ship, we showered and prepared for dinner. We went ashore with friends by tender, and treated them to dinner in town to thank them for hosting the open house to support my candidacy for the board.

The town was relatively dead at the time we arrived. That is because today is the celebration of MidSummer Festival, an event held every year on the first Friday following the summer solstice. Apparently, there was a parade in town from 12 o’clock to to 2:00 PM, and then a bunch of dancing around the Maypole for hours after that. Then, many of the townspeople take a break before heading out again at 9 o’clock or 10 o’clock at night to continue the celebrations.

Because of today’s festival, not many restaurants were open, but I managed to secure a reservation at one of the nicer restaurants in town, Rosengarden, where we sat at a very pleasant outdoor table with great views of the square and ruins. The waiter warned us that the kitchen would be slow tonight, we told him it would be most important to bring us three bottles of wine and water, all of which we summarily finished before eating. The herring appetizers were tasty as were the sweet meringue and strawberry desserts,  but we seem to have been served the last and most thoroughly cooked (and tough) veal… luckily for me, I ordered the lamb.  We enjoyed the restaurant for almost 3 hours.

On the way back to the tender, as we walked through the  ancient village about which I wrote yesterday, we stumbled upon the remains of another church, that had been bombed out long ago.

Down by the wharf, I was enamored by the large collection of sailboats.

We grabbed the tender back to the ship and then wandered to our apartments and drifted off to sleep. But before doing so, I checked my FitBit which registered a personal best 7-day period of 134, 324 steps – or an average of 19,000 steps a day. Not bad.