Long weekend
May. 24th, 2009 06:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livThursday was one of those random Swedish holidays, and that made Friday a squeezing day or semi-holiday. To my great delight, jack was able to come and join me for one last episode of the Swedish phase of our relationship. And we've had a truly wonderful few days.
jack showed up at around teatime on Wednesday, which worked really well; I left work just a little early to meet him at the station, and we had plenty of time to go out for a nice relaxed dinner and spend the evening catching up, and still feel fresh the next morning. We ended up at Noodle House, which in spite of the name is actually a really nice, grand Vietnamese restaurant.
We spent Thursday morning at EBH's annual brunch in her allotment, which was great fun, and everybody was charming to us, even though we are newcomers to a group of friends and neighbours who have been meeting for decades. EBH fed us very well, with herring and cheese and schnapps and all kinds of amazing cakes. Then I had to go to into the lab to finish a few things off, andjack patiently waited for me. When I had a two hour gap to wait for something to cook, we went for a little wander in the woods behind the institute, which was absolutely gorgeous, so lovely to be outdoors at this time of year.
Friday we made a plan to go exploring in the archipelago and make the most of my last few weeks of Swedish summer. Several of our plans were thwarted, but we managed to have a lot of fun anyway and got in our exploring and our boat trip somehow. After the first tour we picked out from the internet turned out not to exist, we ended up taking the ordinary public transport bus to Gustavsberg, the town in the middle of the big Värmdö island. We had a really nice café lunch in a bakery there, which turned out to have the tastiest bread and cakes I've found in Sweden and that's saying something. It was a bit damp, and we were delayed by my bank card deciding to die (though the bank helpfully sorted it out without even having to switch to English), and so missed the second boat tour we'd intended to go on. Undaunted, we decided to take the ordinary commuting ferry back to Stockholm via Vaxholm, which gave us a couple of hours in Gustavsberg.
We found a library, in a cute little round building with a glass spire, and the library informed us what tourist stuff was available in the town. So we wandered down to the quayside where there are several reclaimed factories, forming a quarter with cafés and art galleries and such. We went to the porcelain museum; Sweden has mostly specialized in glass but Gustavsberg is the one place with major china production. The museum was small but sweet, with some nice examples of china spanning the history of the Gustavsberg factory, a couple of small art installations, and a little bit about the history and technique of making china.
We had a little time in Norra Lagnö before our ferry left, and it's the prettiest little place. Hard to believe it's a suburb of Stockholm, probably less than an hour from the city centre by car, because it's absolutely idyllic. It's a peninsula with amazing views over the archipelago, and very untamed seeming woods. Actually ending the day with the boat trip worked really well, because we were pretty tired from all that fresh air and tramping about, so it was lovely to just relax and watch the islands go by. And the sun came out at that point so everything was sparkling and beautiful.
We went to SA's for dinner, along with YF. And that was ever so sociable and delightful, to the extent that we failed to end the conversation and leave until it was really quite late. Happily we hadn't really banked on getting up early on Saturday, just headed to a small park in Kungsholmen for a picnic in the afternoon. Joanna was able to join us, and YF and SA were there again, and FS also showed up. It was a bit drizzly when we first arrived, but then the sun came out and it was just perfect for a picnic. As it happened, Joanna had invited everybody to dinner, so the rest of us went out for a walk around the pretty parts of Kungsholmen while she finished cooking and preparing. And we had tasty food (Joanna is a fantastic cook!) followed by a hilarious evening of Apples to Apples, which I'd heard of but never previously managed to play. The funniest moment came when the adjective was "cuddly" and my hand was such that the most plausible card I could pick was "pitbull terrier"... Again, we didn't get away till late, but it was particularly good to see Joanna, as she's about to disappear for a round of conferences and networking, and probably won't be back until after I leave Sweden.
So that was an absolutely ideal balance of socializing and tourism with relaxing and enjoying eachother's company. (We had time in between forjack to explain a whole bunch of programming concepts to me, and for me to explain Jewish denominations to him.) It was a bit silly seeing the same crowd of people for three separate social occasions on Friday night, Saturday afternoon and Saturday evening, but hey, they're all people I wanted to see. The only disappointment was that SS was supposed to be present for all three, but didn't make it to any of them. I happened to run into him at the station on the way to meeting jack, but then he disappeared again.
jack was able to come and join me for one last episode of the Swedish phase of our relationship. And we've had a truly wonderful few days. jack showed up at around teatime on Wednesday, which worked really well; I left work just a little early to meet him at the station, and we had plenty of time to go out for a nice relaxed dinner and spend the evening catching up, and still feel fresh the next morning. We ended up at Noodle House, which in spite of the name is actually a really nice, grand Vietnamese restaurant. We spent Thursday morning at EBH's annual brunch in her allotment, which was great fun, and everybody was charming to us, even though we are newcomers to a group of friends and neighbours who have been meeting for decades. EBH fed us very well, with herring and cheese and schnapps and all kinds of amazing cakes. Then I had to go to into the lab to finish a few things off, and
jack patiently waited for me. When I had a two hour gap to wait for something to cook, we went for a little wander in the woods behind the institute, which was absolutely gorgeous, so lovely to be outdoors at this time of year. Friday we made a plan to go exploring in the archipelago and make the most of my last few weeks of Swedish summer. Several of our plans were thwarted, but we managed to have a lot of fun anyway and got in our exploring and our boat trip somehow. After the first tour we picked out from the internet turned out not to exist, we ended up taking the ordinary public transport bus to Gustavsberg, the town in the middle of the big Värmdö island. We had a really nice café lunch in a bakery there, which turned out to have the tastiest bread and cakes I've found in Sweden and that's saying something. It was a bit damp, and we were delayed by my bank card deciding to die (though the bank helpfully sorted it out without even having to switch to English), and so missed the second boat tour we'd intended to go on. Undaunted, we decided to take the ordinary commuting ferry back to Stockholm via Vaxholm, which gave us a couple of hours in Gustavsberg.
We found a library, in a cute little round building with a glass spire, and the library informed us what tourist stuff was available in the town. So we wandered down to the quayside where there are several reclaimed factories, forming a quarter with cafés and art galleries and such. We went to the porcelain museum; Sweden has mostly specialized in glass but Gustavsberg is the one place with major china production. The museum was small but sweet, with some nice examples of china spanning the history of the Gustavsberg factory, a couple of small art installations, and a little bit about the history and technique of making china.
We had a little time in Norra Lagnö before our ferry left, and it's the prettiest little place. Hard to believe it's a suburb of Stockholm, probably less than an hour from the city centre by car, because it's absolutely idyllic. It's a peninsula with amazing views over the archipelago, and very untamed seeming woods. Actually ending the day with the boat trip worked really well, because we were pretty tired from all that fresh air and tramping about, so it was lovely to just relax and watch the islands go by. And the sun came out at that point so everything was sparkling and beautiful.
We went to SA's for dinner, along with YF. And that was ever so sociable and delightful, to the extent that we failed to end the conversation and leave until it was really quite late. Happily we hadn't really banked on getting up early on Saturday, just headed to a small park in Kungsholmen for a picnic in the afternoon. Joanna was able to join us, and YF and SA were there again, and FS also showed up. It was a bit drizzly when we first arrived, but then the sun came out and it was just perfect for a picnic. As it happened, Joanna had invited everybody to dinner, so the rest of us went out for a walk around the pretty parts of Kungsholmen while she finished cooking and preparing. And we had tasty food (Joanna is a fantastic cook!) followed by a hilarious evening of Apples to Apples, which I'd heard of but never previously managed to play. The funniest moment came when the adjective was "cuddly" and my hand was such that the most plausible card I could pick was "pitbull terrier"... Again, we didn't get away till late, but it was particularly good to see Joanna, as she's about to disappear for a round of conferences and networking, and probably won't be back until after I leave Sweden.
So that was an absolutely ideal balance of socializing and tourism with relaxing and enjoying eachother's company. (We had time in between for
jack to explain a whole bunch of programming concepts to me, and for me to explain Jewish denominations to him.) It was a bit silly seeing the same crowd of people for three separate social occasions on Friday night, Saturday afternoon and Saturday evening, but hey, they're all people I wanted to see. The only disappointment was that SS was supposed to be present for all three, but didn't make it to any of them. I happened to run into him at the station on the way to meeting jack, but then he disappeared again.