Military Museum, Fika at Hovdala, and Meeting Dexter

Late Friday morning I met with Laurie and George with plans to hit up two local museums.  First we were headed to the Hässleholm Museum in Heritage Park to check out the local artifacts within.  When we arrived, however, we found that it wouldn't open until 1:00pm, a couple of hours later.  So, we continued on to the other destination for the day: Hässleholm's Transportation, Technology, and Military Museum.

Hässleholm used to be home to a regiment of the Swedish army.  This museum had a number of exhibits displaying the history of the T4 Regiment, but also had a number of vehicles, weapons, uniforms, and other artifacts from other parts of the Swedish Military.

After going through a very large room with a number of military exhibits on officers, medics, and other soldierly tools, the museum continued into two huge hangars filled with armored and other military vehicles.

One of the best parts about this museum is that you could walk all around the vehicles and nothing was cordoned off so you could touch, lean on, lean over, climb on (sort of) and even peek in to the vehicles as George is doing here to take a picture of the interior of this APC.

Look very closely and you can see "DETROIT DIESEL" stamped on this Swedish tank engine.

The museum also had a room dedicated to the local fire department and the tools of their trade, as well as a room for horse and buggy evolution.

We spent so enough time at this museum that we were a little museumed out afterwards and opted not to retry Heritage Park's museumic offering today.  Instead, we previewed Infinity Restaurang and walked through the shopping area of Hässleholm before heading back to Icelandia.  After some much needed recharging there, we were contacted by Johan Perssons, Hurricane's Center, who invited us for fika!

Johan drove us just outside of Hässleholm to Hovdala Slott (seen behind him, here) which has a cafe in the courtyard with excellent fika fare.

It was a beautiful day to spend outside.  George and Laurie had not seen Hovdala Slott before (at least without snow), so we spent a little bit of time walking around the grounds, as well as visiting the gift shop.  It was such a nice day, in fact, we decided to pick up Dexter, Johan's dog, and go for a walk in the woods.

Sweden is covered mostly by forest, and Hässleholm is surrounded by woods and forests with walking paths like these.  Dexter has a ton of energy, but dutifully stays with the group.