Moderna Museet

I wrote about the Modern Art Museum in Stockholm previously here. It's still free but they charge for one or two major temporary exhibits if you want to see them. I love the place for the lunch spot with the beautiful overlook, interesting art pieces, and challenging thought processes. Here's a few random pics.

Hallwylska Museet

Hallwyl Museum is one of Stockholm's free museums. It's centrally located so I can't believe I missed it when I lived here. It isn't huge so it's a nice hour or so of looking around at this 1890s home with the collection of Countess Wilhelmina von Hallwyl.

Tutankhamun

The traveling exhibition of Tutankhamun is a great way to experience the discovery of the tomb. There's informative audio guides, multimedia displays, and convincing replicas. One review claims the originals in Egypt aren't as well presented as this. However, I read that they're working on a new Grand Egyptian Museum near the Giza pyramids that will be partially opening in May 2018. There's something to add to the bucket list since I've been fascinated by ancient Egypt since I was a little boy.

Uppsala

I lived in Sweden for 2 years but when I traveled outside Stockholm it was usually to another country. We went to Uppsala for an overnight trip to see something different. It's just an hour away by train so it could be done as a day trip. Uppsala is Sweden's 4th largest city of 140K with the oldest university in the Nordic countries founded in 1477. The town is nice to walk around in and the 13th century cathedral is a highlight as the tallest church in Scandinavia.

R&R Cost-Construct

Cost-construct doesn't follow common sense. It follows government negotiated rates for some routes, perhaps some influence from consumer demand, and apparently a bit of good fortune when the cost-construct gods smile on you. I've learned it pays to at least ask.

The R&R point for Caracas, Venezuela is Miami. There's heavy demand for those flights, so prices are generally high. We wanted to cost-construct R&R to Stockholm, Sweden. I asked. The surprising answer was that a flight to Stockholm via Paris on Air France was a little cheaper than going to Miami. Who would think?!? No money out of pocket! Yep, R&R is in Stockholm. :-)

DC for CA Systems Training

I made a quick trip up to DC for a week to attend CA Systems training. PS310 is a great class if you need to work on CA systems. I feel like I went from knowing nothing to being fully capable of configuring the software and hardware to do everything it needs to do for the various CA roles. The class has a lot of hands-on training and troubleshooting in a good lab setup. I highly recommend my fellow IMS take the course, but my usual point of blog posts is to share pictures. Here's some from the bookend weekends I added to the trip. There's various buildings and monuments (you can guess which ones) and a lot of pictures from the cherry blossoms in bloom that we just happened to catch.

Santa Teresa Rum Factory

We joined a group trip to the Santa Teresa Rum Factory for a tour, rum tasting, and lunch. It's just a 2 hour drive from Caracas so it was a good day trip. The rum tasting served to prove that more expensive rum tends to taste better. That's exactly how they should determine which rum is more expensive. It's just weird if better tasting rum was cheaper.

We ended up buying the mid-range Selecto because we preferred it over the 1796 Solera at half the price, though price isn't much of a consideration when buying local good. So much for prices dictating tastes. Selecto seems to be a bit rare outside of Venezuela so good luck finding it. We also got an orange blended and a coffee blended rum to try even though they weren't a part of the tasting.

I learned that their basic Gran Reserva rum is blended from aged rum of 2-5 years because Venezuelan law requires 2 year aging for it to be called rum here. The cheap stuff from other countries may only be aged 6 months. If there's one thing you get from living in Venezuela, it's plenty of exposure to rum and opportunities to try it and learn about the differences. So far, Diplomático Reserva Exclusiva is our favorite. The funny business with exchange rates and locally produced goods like these rums make them pretty cheap for us.

Pictures weren't allowed in some parts of the active production areas but here's what I got everywhere else.