Friday off from work. Waking up, breakfast. Getting ready. Music. Shower. Ready.

X and I went to Artipelag, a really great sight to see ((Apart from their shop, which was a fucking horrendous, massive shout to the excellence of the legacy of the founder and nothing more.)) where nature meets a pearl of architecture and art in the middle of the Stockholmian archipelago. Hence the name. Get it?

So we got on a bus from central Stockholm city and left for the country.

As you can plainly see, the sights en route are even breathtaking, and we saw them from the top of a double-decker bus. Sunny. Lovely. Both of us.

As you can see, the place is broken off by some planky segues leading off from the place along the water, showing us the nature and just calming everything down. We went around having perused the artwork. I liked the photography by Candida Höfer a lot more than the artwork that had been gathered there. Call me new-fashioned, but I didn't like the painted stuff much. Some of it was very nice, but most of it left a sense of adventure being lost, or just...boring, actually. There was nothing modern in some of it, which really made me sad considering how recent a lot of it was.

Note the stickers; those were put on yourself to let the lackadaisical staff know you were allowed into the exhibitions.

The nature and architecture was really quite breathtaking at times.

I like art that scares people. Frankly, I thought the silhouette of a scary child was more frightening than, say, the image of a child about to jump or fall from a tall building.

Then - the dinner. Oh, the dinner.

I won't give the staff any credit, really. They banged on quite a bit as we arrived and lacked a sense of service. But the food really made up for it.

This was the starter. Asparagus with fried onions, nuts and parsily. The asparagus was very fresh and crunchy, perfectly cooked, and went very well with the oil - and the white wine we'd ordered, I'm afraid. Perfect!

The starter. A potato terrine not mashed, but blended, where it all just came together with the two asparagus ingredients, the most taste-explosive beet-root I've ever had and a poached egg to die for. Just splendid.

Yes, even this shitty picture of the bread shows three different, all tasty, versions of bread with butter and...it's all just so good!

The rain came down hard a bit earlier but everything lifted as we were having dinner, together, in the middle of nowhere. Just my X, a wonderful dinner in a great space in the woods. I could really not ask for more, and I didn't have to. That was happiness to me.