Euphoric Swedish Summer

We've had a full month of beautiful weather. Some are even complaining that it's too hot - because they have spent their lives in misery and the torture of never knowing good weather. I am full-on loving this summer.
Good buddies Edmund and Amber invited us down to their country home for a weekend of typical Swedish things and mahjong. We självplock'ed strawberries, baked them into things Great British Bake-Off Style (with me as judge), swam in a lake, and BBQed and had dinner outside. Can't ask for much more than this from Sweden.
Long-time readers will know I am a sucker for these cutout face things.
The weather is supposed to turn tonight. In fact, it's already raining. So I had to get it up to walk around the lake today before things go south and become more typical. Here's a few from Delsjön.
Next from me will probably be Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania. Stay tuned!

All the things I ate in DC: a retrospective

Note: this is not all the things I ate. I'm not a crazy person. I only wrote down the highlights.
 Tamales, enchiladas, pico de gallo, guacamole, freshly-fried tortilla chips. Sour cream. Avocado salsa. Hot sauce. Fajitas, enchiladas, chile relleno.
 Oysters, red wine, steak, salad, hummus.
 Smoothie (blended ice beverages are surprisingly hard to come by in Europe), grilled sandwiches (Potbelly), pickles.
 Peruvian chicken, yuca. Clam chowder. Sourdough bread that tasted sour.
 Biscuits, a reuben sandwich, a thick milkshake.
 Muffaletta (from frozen), more wine. Corned beef hash, more fajitas. Bagels and cream cheese.
 Hands-down highlight: flautas, pupusas, tacos, horchata.
 Potato skins, philly cheesesteak, french fries. Cookies and cream ice cream. Thai-inspired brussels sprouts salad with hot pickled tomatoes.
 Avocadoes, eight courses of firey-hot Northern Thai food (Little Serow), more wine. Dark and stormy.
 Bahn mi, taro bubble tea smoothie. Homemade taco extravaganza. (We filled and destroyed the piñata.)
 Costco hot dog. Pizza that wasn't as good as the pizza in Sweden. Snickerdoodle cookie.
 Lebanese "salad" bowl, more oysters. Crab cake.
 Ethiopian: various pea stews, chicken and egg stew, lamb stew, spinach stew. 1/3 of each of the following: chocolate-glazed donut with oreo, chocolate-glazed donut with coconut and peanuts, cinnamon-sugar donut with vanilla drizzle. Iced coffee.

Malmö and Copenhagen and Carrie

Every time I go to Copenhagen, I think: why don't we go to Copenhagen more often? There is no good answer to that question. Copenhagen is awesome. But first: Malmö! Carrie, David's partner, was in town for a couple weeks on her international tour of doctoring awesomeness. Naturally we had to pop down to say hello, eat some foods and gallivant.
Malmö was extremely charming and had very cutesy buildings, beating the shit out of Gothenburg in that regard. Here's a prime example:
We mostly just walked around shopping for the afternoon but we did manage to visit two houses of art: some kind of design forum right in the center and the contemporary art museum, which was free! Check out their super-cool lockers above.
I get to be married to this person! He's away at the moment so I'm feeling all mushy.
It's kind of crazy how much time can pass and people are more or less the same as you left them. I hadn't seen Carrie in more than two years and we're not very good about keeping in touch but since David and I are always chatting, I know what's going on with her and probably she about me. We didn't skip a beat when we met up and that's always a nice feeling.
This is theoretically a "garden":
George wouldn't go for a second round so I had to provide the jumping.
We had fancy dinner at Matrummet, which was nice enough. I think my fine dining standards are way too high. George and I have decided to take something of a break - we want to be delighted again and it's far too expensive a venture to do as a throwaway.
After that, it was up early for Copenhagen! The time really flew by so we mostly went from walking to one place to eat, to museum, to train. But we did manage to pass by a really cool arthouse / coffeeshop / theater type of place.
Neither of my companions consented to sit on the floor for this portrait so again I had to play subject.
A basket of babies at Thorvaldsens Museum. Dude was big on sculptures.
And that was pretty much that!
These last two are from Konstrundan i Majorna (art walk in Majorna, a neighborhood in town). Lucia and I spent some serious time exploring the galleries and workshops of Majorna and there are so many and it was really cool. We both bought a little art.