If you know me well enough, you’ll know that one of my creative pursuits is cooking. While I’m not particularly interested in making fancy or too complicated meals, most of my signature dishes are usually appreciated and most arguably qualify as tasty comfort food.

I am of a generation that tends to be almost ridiculously loyal to a few choice brands, including Apple (computers, phones, earphones), Levis (jeans, Patagonia (sweaters), Uniqlo (socks, tees), Muji (storage), Scarpa, (shoes) Winsor & Newton (paint), Paderno (cookware), Red Wing (boots), Clark’s (shoes).

I just realized that several of my all-time favorite brands are related to cooking, including a couple of chef’s knives from Wüsthof, a trusty blender from Vitamix which I use on a daily basis to create our morning smoothie, and, the above pictured, decade-old Kitchen Aid food processor. The photo is from when I was just about to blend a bunch of veggies for our Sunday evening dinner salad.

What distinguishes all of the above brands and the only real reason why I continue to be loyal to the companies behind these utilitarian products is the simple fact that they’ve provided a level of durability and usefulness that makes them worthy purchases. Not always, but I mostly still believe that you get what you pay for.

This one of my latest paintings, a fairly large acrylic on canvas, 88 x 116 cm. The painting’s title, “The Loyalty of Mister Matsumoto-san” stems from one of my favorite film noir flicks, Ridley Scott’s “Black Rain” with Michael Douglas, Andy Garcia and the always splendid Japanese actor Ken Takakura who plays Assistant Inspector Matsumoto Masahiro.

Here’s my Google Review from the hotel we stayed at in Larnaca, Hotel Indigo. I see my reviews on Google as a mere writing exercise, a way to keep my English honed and maintain my lightweight travel journalism. Here’s the link to the Google Review version of this review.

As soon as the airport taxi van pulled up to the curb outside Hotel Indigo in Larnaca’s Old Town and I saw the hotel’s beautiful facade, I had a feeling that I’d made the right choice.

While the hotel’s exterior looks somewhat aesthetically connected to the neighborhood in regards to architectural style and color scheme, once I entered the lobby, there was very little that subsequently reminded me that I was in Cypress.

Hotel Indigo is a highly conceptualized yet still tastefully designed boutique hotel. It could literally be located anywhere in the world. In fact, I’ve actually stayed a few nights at a Hotel Indigo in Bangkok (Thailand) with similar interior decor and facilities.

Though my room’s (104) balcony didn’t offer a particularly interesting view, the property is located in Larnaca’s charming albeit partially crumbly old town. So the 360 views from the hotel’s lovely rooftop pool were all the more impressive. Especially the stunning view of the Mediterranean a few blocks beyond.

Upon my arrival, I soon discovered that this former British colony has the same archaic wall socket connectors as in the UK. So, I kindly asked the receptionist if she could help me with an adapter.

Instead of trying to locate one for me, she suggested that I find a store in town the following day (a Sunday) where they sell adapters. Why the hotel doesn’t have a few adapters in a drawer is a mystery…

I found most of the staff at Hotel Indigo to be extraordinarily friendly and helpful. Especially in the restaurant where an exceptionally service-minded team promptly and elegantly served delicious coffee and a very nicely presented and thoroughly tasty a la carte breakfast.

The hotel’s housekeeping staff did a really good job of making up our room and they were always smiling and friendly whenever we interacted.

The front desk staff was also friendly… but when we politely asked to checkout at 1:00 pm, i.e. an hour later than what their 11:00 am policy dictates (we had a late afternoon flight back to Europe), the young woman on duty said that the hotel was fully booked and that it was not possible to provide us with an extra hour.

It typically takes 20-30 minutes to clean a room of the (small) size we stayed in. Since checkin time is 3:00 pm, that would have given housekeeping almost 2 hours to clean our room before the next guest(s) arrived.

I stay at 25-30 different hotels every year and 95% of them offer an extra hour without discussion (or, pointing out a silly, inflexible policy).

Also, as I was waiting in the lobby for my airport taxi at about 1:00 pm, a few other guests were clearly checking out. Why I was discriminated against and not allowed to enjoy the same checkout time is another mystery.

All said, I really enjoyed staying at Hotel Indigo in Larnaca. It’s located in a relatively quiet part of Old Town, the breakfast is really, really good and the rooftop pool and pool bar are fabulous.

So, if you don’t need to stay on the beach (which is super busy and not really much to write home about), Hotel Indigo is a superb choice.

With the exception of a minuscule gym and my somewhat disappointing encounters with the front desk staff, I had a nice guest experience.

Hotel Indigo is definitely recommendable

So my goal before officially becoming a “sexagenarian” – a person who is between 60 and 69 years old – is to have three new photo books available for sale on the Amazon (print-on-demand) bookstore.

My long-time trusted book designer and fellow photographer David Pahmp is making the final tweaks to Silhouette Surfers and it should be available for purchase within a couple of weeks.

From yesterday’s 12k hike in a nature reserve near Båstad. Like all the other trails on the hills of Hallandsåsen, the Axeltorp route was stunningly beautiful and surprisingly empty of other hikers. This is such a beautiful time of year to hike in southern Sweden. Spring leaves are a bright, chlorophyll green which contrasts wonderfully with last year’s reddish brown leaves on the ground.

This is from early this morning as I inspected the eight ginormous prints of my photographs from the Dockan area in Västra Hamnen. The client, Whilborgs Fastigheter, has purchased the images to decorate the walls of their new corporate headquarters.

Here’s yours truly yesterday, standing in front of a couple of my new, surf-themed acrylic paintings and my trusty old retired shortboard at Clarion Hotel Sea U in Helsingborg, Sweden. The exhibition opening was a cozy affair with plenty of friends and guests stopping by to say hi and take a look at the collection of photos, paintings, and the surf film I’d produced for the show. I love being able to exhibit and share my creativity through different mediums so that a show like “Silhouette Surfers” becomes a more immersive, conceptual experience.

I’m in the midst of a really optimistic, creatively productive flow right now. Hopefully, it’ll last a few more days, at least until my exhibit on Friday. Above is today’s palette. I probably spent about an hour of my 7-hour session just mixing colors and figuring out what hues would work for the two paintings on my easels right now.

This is the view of the harbor in the old coastal village Mölle-by-the-Sea, about an hour northwest of Malmö. Turns out that 2023 is the year of two significant milestones. 

Firstly, on August 15 1998, Charlotte and I were married at Brunnby Church, just a few clicks from Mölle. While I do remember fragments from the matrimonial ceremony, it was the dinner and party after the wedding that to this day fills my heart with joy and love. This is obviously highly subjective, but I have yet to experience a wedding party that’s come even remotely close to ours. There is also some sadness when I think about that evening as about a half dozen of our guests have since passed on.

The fact that Charlotte and I are already celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary (a silver jubilee, no less), is simply amazing!

The considerably harder anniversary for me to grasp is that in just a few months’ time, I’ll be 60 years old. A sexagenarian. No matter how I try to absorb this fact, the more abstract the “anniversary” becomes. I just can’t relate. Thankfully (he says with ill-concealed sadistic pleasure), I have a lot of friends that also turn 60 this year. Pain shared is pain divided, I suppose.

I wonder what it’s going to feel like when we all turn septuagenarians (70-79).

Yep, it’s that time of year again. Spring never arrives casually in southern Sweden. It literally breaks out from one week to the next. A kind follower from this page let me know the other day about the courtyard where she lives and how beautiful the cherry trees are right now. I went over there today and the delicate pink and white blossoms certainly create a stunning, almost surreal sight for these winter-worn eyes.

While genuinely appreciated here in Scandinavia, cherry tree blooming is a really important cultural event in Japan, where it is known as Hanami. People gather under the blooming trees to celebrate the arrival of spring, and to enjoy picnics and parties with friends and family. A few years back, Charlotte, Elle, and I celebrated Hanami in Tokyo. It was nothing short of amazing!

In addition to their obvious aesthetic and aromatic appeal, cherry blossoms have symbolic significance in Japanese culture. They are seen as a metaphor for the fleeting nature of life, as the blossoms only last for a short time before falling to the ground. Cherry blossoms also represent renewal and the beauty of new beginnings.

In the United States, the National Cherry Blossom Festival is held annually in Washington, D.C., to commemorate the gift of cherry blossom trees from Japan to the United States in 1912.

Walked by this utility station the other day. Regular readers will know that I am always on the lookout for these stations, wherever I happen to be in the world. As far as I can remember, it’s the only original, old-school utility station that I’ve ever seen in over 25 years of living in Malmö. I love the design and above all, the old logo relief on top and on the manhole below.

There was no posting on it, and therefore only interesting as a relic of Televerket, the precursor of today’s Telia, Sweden’s partially state-owned telecom company. When I moved to Sweden in 1978, Televerket was a monopoly and omnipresent in society. With a fleet of bright orange vans and an army of orange-clad technicians, there was no shortage of critique and jokes about Televerket’s notoriously bad customer service which some would argue is only marginally better today. To a degree, I think the monopolistic mentality is still alive and kicking.

Here’s a little Televerket-to-Telia background (courtesy of ChatGPT):

Televerket was a Swedish telecommunications company that was in operation from 1853 to 1993. It was established as a government agency and was responsible for managing all aspects of Sweden’s telecommunications infrastructure, including telegraphs, telephones, and radio communications. In the 1980s, Televerket began to face competition from other telecom companies, and in 1993 it was restructured and transformed into the modern telecommunications company Telia. Today, Telia is one of the largest telecom companies in the Nordic region, providing a wide range of services including mobile and fixed-line telephony, broadband internet, and digital TV.

Home again after three wonderfully intense days in Napoli and two on the island of Ischia. After indulging in way too much pizza and pasta, I am now swollen, inflated, and in desperate need of a dietary detox.

Returning home to our giant bed, which cushy comfort no hotel bed comes even close to, is always something to look forward to. Especially after flying with no-frills Ryan Air.