4223957
9781880675069
Trolls, fairies, kings, butterflies, hedgehogs and relative; that's what my granddaughters experienced on our bicycle ride through Sweden. Six-year-old Emily and Jessica biked 400 miles across rural Sweden on a tag-along attached to the seat of my bicycle. "You can't go too fast, Grandpa or we'll miss something," they told me. So we rode at a moderate speed and stopped every 20 or 30 minutes so the girls could chase butterflies, eat wild strawberries, run up the hills, pick wildflowers or take a nap.We biked over the Gota Kanal, swam in the crystal-clear Baltic Sea, slept at a spa dating back to the 1700s, explored the 800-year-old fortress walls of Visby, visited 13th-century churches and ate smoked eel. As we rode through enchanted forest we kept our eyes peeled for trolls and while we didn't actually see them, we could hear and smell them---they smell like fresh-turned earth.The granddaughters experienced spectacular rural scenery, the sparkling Baltic Sea, deer, hedgehogs, fox, rabbits, hares, wild peacocks, eagles, Gotland ponies, butterflies, medieval churches and more red Swedish barns than I could ever imagine. My six-year-old granddaughters impressed me by pedaling for 6 to 8 hours a day for 11 days and still maintained a positive, upbeat, inquisitive attitude.Johnson, Allen LeRoy is the author of 'Sweden through the Eyes of a Six-Year-Old: Adventures with Grandchildren - Allen L. Johnson - Hardcover' with ISBN 9781880675069 and ISBN 1880675064.
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