Mora!

We had a long but good day. We woke up early to travel to Mora, in the Swedish countryside, which involved a walk to the metro station (about 5 minutes usually, unless you think you left your Eurail passes in the apartment and make your husband run back only to find them at the bottom of the backpack you're carrying), a 10 minute ride to the central station, a 4 and half hour long train ride (supposed to be 2.5 hours but riddled with delays), a 1.5 hour taxi ride from our train's connecting stop to Mora (the delays made us miss the connecting train, but the Swedish railway arranged for a taxi to take us and 7 other people to Mora free of charge- nice!), and a 15 minute walk from the train station to the Anders Zorn Museum. And then back.

It was totally worth it. We met up with our friends Sean, Gretchen, baby Gunnar, and Gretchen's mom and uncle who were coming from Ostersund, up in the north. Totally weird timing that they too were visiting Sweden, so we thought we'd meet in the middle, at a museum Jeff was dying to see. It was an incredible show. The museum was celebrating 150 years since Zorn's birth with a big retrospective of his work. So amazing. All the pics I took are on flickr (or will be, they're taking forever to load. Just check back to my flickr site from a past album and click on sets to see when it goes up), and I'll post my favorites.

This first one he did at 18 years old, and really launched him. It's a watercolor, and it's fantastic.

These next two are from the same watercolor. It's amazing how much detail he gets in the faces from watercolors. I don't get it. 

And because it's not enough to be a master painter, he was also an expert woodcarver. These busts were of his mother and sister and are thought to be his best woodcarving works.

This painting was so neat to see in person. I tried to capture it as best as I could on my camera, to get the faces (and the skull at the bottom) that are shadowed in the frame in the shot.

This was a self-portrait he did. I like his fluffy coat. I could use one of those in Sweden.

See the lines going through this next one? It's because he didn't like how it was turning out so he cut it up and a sneaky fellow artist snagged the thrown away pieces and put it back together. 

This one was Jeff's favorite. It was huge, and had so much detail. He liked something about the lighting I think. We both loved the little baby on the floor playing with a potato.

Close-up of the baby:

We're exhausted (again) but looking forward to sleeping in and then seeing my aunt and uncle and cousins tomorrow! Let's hope for good weather so we can walk around the water and enjoy some sights...