Segling: West Coast Version

I'm sorry this is so long in coming, but there is just so much to do...

I think this will just be super picture-heavy, and if you want to know more, I'd love to tell you in person.

Enjoy!

View from our "bunk".

Chart especially necessary when navigating through 400 islands that look the same.

Motoring through a canal, checking out the cows, sheep, and other animal friends who have waterfront property.

Sverige!

Visiting Erik's pappa's sister and family in Kämpersvik.  It felt a lot like Noank or Groton Long Point...but with a bastu.

Played lots of "fotball" with new friends Lidun (4) and Sondre (2), cousins of Erik.

I actually ate an animal that used to live in the sea: crayfish.  On toast with aioli, yes please and thank you.

Next day, to a small island nearby to climb this fractured stone mass.

Walking under those huge stones lodged in this small crevice should not have felt racy but did.

Looking out over town and archipelago.

Playing craps to pass the time.  Anchored off a nature preserve.

With this as the view! Across the way there were all sorts of little houses built onto the rocks (as you really see everywhere), including a bastu where you could just run down the dock and dive into the cold ocean water.

In Smögen, a very touristy but also adorable place.

Our first of many swims.  Erik on his way out.

And in...

This is harder than it looks.  Water was so, so cold but then rather delightful once you're in.

Post-swim lättöl and relaxation.

And finally, some serious ocean sailing, with high, favorable winds.

And ocean tankers.

Minutes from our hemhamn, this beauty.  I felt like I should have been taking more pictures of the houses along the shoreline, but there were just so damn many, each of which was cuter than the last....so here's our representative.  Although often on the west coast the houses are white....

Erik modeling in the awning my pappa built for Eriks pappa.  Worked like a dream, a really wonderful thing for our first night, when it was drizzling somewhat, and then the last night, when it was so windy but we wanted to play cards.

View from the side.  It is the perfect size, and was much admired by ourselves as well as passersby.

Final supper.

And cards!  A favorite game of the family, hjärter sju, or Seven of Hearts.  Really great game, we'll play sometime.

The next day was full of swimming and visiting friends, and then a six-hour car ride back to Falun.  The day after: train ride home early in the morning so we could prepare for Sarah and Alex, friends from highschool and New York, to arrive around midnight.

That story in pictures coming soon.

Puss!

Segling

på Västkusten!

It's been decided, despite a somewhat so-so weather outlook, that we will go sailing on the West Coast....starting tomorrow!  Yikes, packing, mead-bottling (we bought flaskor at Ikea this morning), library-DVD-returning....then train to Falun late tonight.  Tomorrow, a little six-hour drive to the other coast, then...well, I'll see how it works over here!  At least I learned a few words from working at Vasamuseet but...I hope I don't embarrass myself too badly.

Long overdue (and set to be eclipsed by this sailing trip if I don't do it now) are pictures from when we went sailing on Skonaren Vega a few weeks ago in Stockholm's archipelago.  It was a cloudy but nice day when we were in Uppsala, and the weather was fine as we walked to Djurgården, but in the last few hundred meters, with the boat in sight, we were overtaken by what felt like a hurricane, with strong winds, driving rain, and even a little bit of thunder!  Yikes.  Thankfully one of the terribly expensive quay-side restaurants still had its awnings set up, and we hid under there with some Americans and a woman in a wheelchair.

Once it let up a bit, we ran to the boat and made it just in time!  It cleared up for our sail around the harbor and long enough for us to eat a little smörgås on the deck, but once we got further out into the archipelago it started to pour again intermittently.  We had a glass of wine and read a bit, and wandered out on deck just in time to see the DOUBLE rainbow!

A really special evening with my good friends Tommy and Odd (and family!) on the three-masted schooner.

Pictures to make you jealous below:

I could take 80000 pictures like this (see: two years ago, this blog)

Erik hjälper!

Sunny enough to squint.

 TWO! TVÅ!

Egil, patriarch, to the right, and interested passenger to the left.

Odd('s) explanation.

Old home!


Speaking of which, my friend Lorraine from Mystic is here working at Vasa for a few weeks, living on St. Erik!  Varmt välkommen!


We were back in Stockholm on Saturday to meet Lorraine and go to a birthday party for Erik's friend.  Turns out Lorraine was coming in Sunday (which I found out Sunday night), but since we were in Stockholm we felt we should eat at Blå Porten (one of our favorite restaurants) and go out to Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde (where we had our first date) before heading out to his friend's new apartment (it was a birthday-slash-moving in with girlfriend party).  It was a perfect day, which looked like this:

 Really incredible chicken.

 The front hallway of the museum.

Can we live here?

Sitting outside after closing time.

Hemingwaying™ the wine (please see: The Sun Also Rises).

En andra Erik L.

A battle of weights on the way home (this is what it looks like at 3:30 AM...ish. possibly 4? Daylight.)


And, because this is taking so long to write, I can also post this, from just a few minutes ago (it's really feast or famine here on this blog):

How interesting that the first (all the way to the left) and the last (all the way to right) are both darker!  We are trying them now, the ones in the middle have been put away to ferment longer.  But I don't want to wait!  They're very sweet, the bottom where all the honey pooled much much too sweet for me, but still rather tasty.  Yahoo!


More after the weekend.  And after the weekend, darlingest Sarah and Alex are coming to visit.  Yippee!

Söndag

Sunday we returned to Falun, but first we went for a walk around a beautiful huge waterfall somewhere in Dalarna.  The unifying theme of the weekend seemed to be millstones, which we saw in spades.  This place had many old millstones, as I'm sure someone used all that waterpower for the greater grinding good.  There were definitely some lying about in Boda and Gulleråsen, but now I can't remember quite where...then later on that Sunday one had been used as a tabletop in the garden at Carl Larsson's house.  I can sense my mother's jealousy six thousand miles away, but good little things from that house are coming to her in the mail for her birthday on the third!

 

All sorts of charming 300-year-old legends come along with this waterfall, which include a foreign (Scotch?) man working in the early 17th century as an overseer of some manual labor in the area (no, no, I was listening, I swear), depressed as hell, trying to throw himself over the waterfall...saved by his horse, who was apparently much less depressed and refused to throw anyone over, and brought him back to his lodgings.....but then a few years later he unfortunately succeeded, presumably on foot.

 

That forest area is called Styggforsen, which basely translates to Wicked Water, but more like a child is naughty than, say a witch.  And "forsen" is more like rapids, but I did like the alliteration.  Anyways, it seems appropriate apropos that man, and the geological anomaly of the place (it was hit by a meteor!) has created seriously steep and thin cliffs.  The other legend translated to me was that if three spinsters stood on one of those cliffs together, it would collapse.  There were some pretty old and lonely-looking women hiking the trail with us, so I'm glad Eriks mamma is married and I'm so spry and youthful.

No spinsters here....


Next we moved on Carl von Linnés marriage house.  We didn't really know why that was a significant landmark, although he is a big deal in Uppsala, and his house museum and garden here are really worth a visit.  This has another great garden, which is what we wanted to see.  I also should be more supportive, because I love historic house museums, and this site has recently become a govermentally-legitimized one of those. (you know what else is k-märkt? my friends' boat, Vega...more on that soon)  But it's less famous for its residents than the fact that he was married here, which I find a bit weird, but...Sweden.  Speaking of which, it is located in a place called Svedens gård, which no one else was excited about as I was.  Do you know how many Americans refuse to say the name with proper English pronunciation but instead say Sveeeeeeeeeeden?  You don't want to know.  Anyways, I found it!  Sveden!

It was a priest's farm, and many farms back then made their own snaps, so there were lots of snaps-specific herbs, which was fun to see.  A really beautiful day after so many overcast days of rain.

Carl Larsson's house and garden were, of course, dreamy.  It is what a historic house should be, really, and all of his things are so well preserved!  Inspiring for both household and museum mind.  So many parts of that house were totally weird and artsy and so overwhelmingly beautifully Arts and Crafts...so many textiles and hand-woven cushions hiding chamber pots.  And Carl painted pictures of and carved the names of himself, his wife and all his children all over the house, right on the walls and mouldings....really incredible!  

We had a great tourguide, who spoke so clearly, slowly and deliberately that I understood most of the tour...in Swedish.  Yesss.  She also looked so perfectly like what Americans think of when they hear the words "twenty-something Swedish girl with long blonde hair".  They all wore these great Reform-style dresses of striped cotton, simple interpretations of Karin Larsson's progressive dress.  I am sure I will write more on that later.  No pictures, since they are not allowed in the museum.  You'll just have to come visit yourself.

Anyways, I can't resist posting this picture of Erik from later that evening (yes, evening, but I don't remember what time...it looks like this until 10, anyways, so if you want it to be 9.30, it's all yours).  In the garden in the backyard in Falun, on a little granite bench, listening to the river and reading Pappa Goriot by Balzac.

 

Puss!