Melbystrand Weekend

We just spent a beautiful the weekend with Sandy, Johan, Merel, Denis, Traci and Oliver at Sandy and Johan's summer house in Melbystrand, a sleepy coastal village about 1.5 hours south of Gothenburg. And man, did we luck out with the weather. On Saturday we woke up to bright blue skies and temperatures bordering on, dare I say, warm! We took a long walk along the coast where we could sort of see Denmark across the water and had lunch (outside! In the sun!) in Båstad, where there's apparently a very big tennis tournament every year. The picture of the little huts, above, was our view when we stopped for fika (coffee break) during our walk, and that's Ava and Traci's son Oliver climbing on an what we think is an old torpedo.

When we got back to the house, Johan pulled out some deck chairs and it took Merel and I about 5.2 seconds to plop down in them and get some chilled wine open. Johan's family came by for a visit and everyone sat around chatting and grazing and enjoying the sun. Honestly, I'm not even sure what Ava and Oliver were doing because they would just sprint by for some chocolate or chips every now and then and then run off to play in the playhouse or jump on the trampoline. Ah, Spring!

Sandy and Johan cooked up a storm all weekend, and dinner on Saturday was a delicious venison stew and Johan's special crispy baked potatoes that I'm definitely going to try to replicate. The whole weekend was very "gezellig" (this is now officially the only Dutch word I know and means something like fun and cozy and social all smushed together).