Checking Things Off

In the last week Jer and I have been checking things off our list of must-dos while we're here in Stockholm. We also forced ourselves to take a few days off and just rest at home, as I had a nasty cold, and neither of us were sleeping well. The good news is that today my ears and throat have ceased aching completely, and I'm coughing very little! Hopefully, we'll both be able to stay healthy for the last 8 days of our trip! Here's what we've been up to in the last week:

1. Saturday we went to the National Museum, which is the Swedish art museum. They had some pieces by great impressionists that have work in every museum around the world, but they also focused on a few Swedish impressionists. However, I think my favorite part of the museum was an exhibit with marble statues in a room surrounded by windows to let in natural light. They even had a "station" to showcase how various types of lighting can change how you view a piece of art. It was refreshing to see a new take on an exhibition in what otherwise was a traditional art gallery. There are few pics below.
2. We spent Tuesday making the long trek via public transportation out to the country side to visit a former colleague of Jeremy's and her family. Their extended family has a little "compound" of tiny summer cottages built on land adjacent to the Baltic, and it was gorgeous! I would love to have a place like that no matter what country it was in! Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures to share, but picture tiny two-four room cottages built our of wood and painted read with white trim, very typical Swedish :)
3. We've also been spending evenings with friends for drinks and dinner both out and in our teeny tiny apartment. It's so small, but we were able to cook and serve a pretty good spread for dinner without too much hassle. And it even motivated Jeremy to help clean up a bit :)
4. After recommendations from two unrelated people, we headed to Fotografiska today. It's a photography museum with a few large exhibitions. One was Lennart Nilsson's A Child is Born, which I found very interesting, but I think Jer was a bit wierded out. It follows the journey of a child from conception to birth. We also saw a large exhibition of Annie Leibovitz's work. She's a famous portrait photographer (you know... the shot of Demi Moore when she was pregnant...). I really liked a lot of her professional stuff and even some of her personal family photos. However, the exhibit seemed to be all over the place in it's set up, and I didn't really get the flow. Maybe I was missing something...

I think that's it for now. Here are just a few of my favorites from the art museum: