July 19, Monday

Hi everyone,

This is going to be a Greg series of updates. Katey is at school with her group finishing her second project. They will present this afternoon and then we will have a 3-day weekend starting with a trip to a beer garden of some sorts tonight after the presentations are over. The class does have a modern architecture of Stockholm tour scheduled on Friday but Katey was able to get the Rickers out of that one, so we are in the clear and very excited about it.

Katey got her second assignment on Monday. It was very similar to the first week’s assignment, which was to walk a neighborhood that the teachers assign each group and create a cohesive narrative that connects buildings, parks, or other urban objects. To prep for this, we spent most of Monday walking/researching her neighborhood, which was not an especially cool neighborhood in either of our opinions.

Here are some pictures from the neighborhood:

Maybe the most noteworthy thing from Monday is that it was our 4 dessert day. Ice cream is big in Sweden. It’s hard to go anywhere without seeing a sign for “glass”. Sooooo, we couldn’t resist getting a couple ice cream bars on our walk. Then we stopped at a candy shop because “we thought there would be good coffee there”. We were disappointed to find that the store was closing for 2 weeks due to holidays and that everything in the store was 50% off. We couldn’t resist picking up a few candies at a bargain like that. Did I mention that Katey also got a little dessert at lunch? Ah well, that was her least favorite of the 4!

Our favorite dessert of the day was after a great dinner in Södermalm, of Stieg Larsson fame. Dinner was at one of Katey’s favorite cafés, Muggen. We split a pasta and cheeseburger. The cheeseburger came on an open faced baguette, which was twice the length of the burgers diameter. The chefs were very generous with the feta cheese, placing a good ¾ inch slab of feta atop the burger. Neither of us feta lovers had a problem with this. The other cool part about Muggen is that they offer a number of water choices. You can pour yourself a glass of water from a jug with lemon, orange, cucumber, or cucumber & watermelon slices. Not bad!

After a FULL dinner, we were talked into trying a crepe place nearby by one of Katey’s classmates who saw us dining at Muggen. Let’s just say I am singing a different tune on crepes going forward. I haven’t been a big fan in the past, but this sliced pear, chocolate sauce and vanilla ice cream crepe was extraordinary.