Our original plan included a trip to northern Italy. Thanks to COVID19 spreading widely there Ryanair have cancelled our flights, so we will instead have a longer stay in the UK, which is OK as there are always lots of things to do there. (And since I first wrote this, our plan for Ireland was dashed also, by the covid pandemic, so we have had a very truncated trip)

Our initial flight took us via Doha (14 h flying) arriving at 5:20 AM with our onward flight to Stockholm scheduled for 3:40 PM, so we took the opportunity of the long transit time to visit the city. We had a very interesting 6 hours exploring a small part.

We took the brand new Metro into the city, then walked around waving our cameras at the scenery (see map below to see the small area we explored) and enjoying the ambience. Across the bay from where we wandered is a large area of exotic high-rise buildings in an area called the Corniche, which reflects the high income in this tiny state, backed by the world’s third largest oil and gas reserves.

Further round the coast there are some huge developments on reclaimed land (similar to the ones in Dubai from what I could see from the plane as we flew out to Sweden.

I’ve put photos and some text into a gallery at https://photos.app.goo.gl/xJtWTEcjjHRyptzs5. Enjoy.

Sweden, in March, is still winterish, so we have had some grey, overcast and sometimes rainy days. However we are enjoying the change from a summer of heat and bushfires.

Here are some photos from around Vasteras https://photos.app.goo.gl/KS8HifxEcwLRWtqx9.

Here are some from Öland https://photos.app.goo.gl/sZa1cMgo6HNKYDzv7.

After Oland we have a week with family before (Ryanair and COVID willing) we fly to the UK. We had a pleasant afternoon with Jill’s brother and family in Stockholm. I headed to the supermarket with Tomas who needed some things… like in Australia, there has been panic buying: https://photos.app.goo.gl/xvS1wkdEw7dPYzQD8

The self-serve checkout systems in some supermarkets in Sweden are amazing so I took some photos of the system in the local shopping centre ICA supermarket in Vasteras: https://photos.app.goo.gl/vioEZbhAUcpsVW678

We have had a few pleasant days with regular visits to see Jill’s mum, and just pottering around. Here is an annotated gallery from our final week in Sweden. https://photos.app.goo.gl/va7zhSL6W7MXdJrf9

We had an uneventful flight (thankfully) with only 19 passengers in the whole plane, and sped through an almost empty Stansted airport. The whole plane’s baggage was there within a minute of us reaching the baggage carousel.

Stansted airport, midday – empty baggage area.

We collected our rental car and headed to Leicester to visit my cousin.  Due to coronavirus, there were extreme measures in place, so we have not done quite what we had planned. Museums etc are all closed. People have to stay at home (allowed one excursion from the house for exercise a day, but must maintain a minimum separation of 2 metres between people. Shopping is limited. Only food stores and pharmacies etc are allowed to open, and the checkouts have 2 metre measures on the floor to ensure people keep their spacing. We’ve been enjoying brief “exercise” walks with camera (need to keep exercising the shutter finger) round the local paths and fields, enjoying the gorgeous blue-sky sunny weather. Spring is sprung with buds and flowers everywhere.

More photos can be viewed at https://photos.app.goo.gl/qHrvSSn6NxAPniyU6

With the air transport catastrophe caused by the pandemic, we had a few traumas with multiple flight changes and challenges getting through to the airline, but we managed eventually to get a booking on a flight back from London to Melbourne. By good fortune, the flight got in to Melbourne 6 hours before the state government’s mandatory hotel quarantine started, so we were able to go home and quarantine in the comforts of home, which wasn’t such a trauma. We managed to get groceries delivered via online ordering, and we had good internet and lots of books to entertain us, so it wasn’t too bad.

Whilst the lock-downs here seemed to raise the hackles of some, most people accepted the limits, wore masks outside their homes and generally played by the rules. As a result, Australia has virtually eliminated the virus (as I write in December 2020), allowing us to live a relatively normal life (without international travel). We look at the situations in the USA, UK, Europe etc and count our lucky stars!