Midsummer at sea

Last night I was invited to celebrate Swedish Midsummer with the Hiebsch, who hosts a Midsummer party every year. My trusty homemade IKEA-wreath came out again! (This year I might actually even wear it for our "proper" Swedish Midsummer (on the 23rd) - IN Sweden!)

The Hiebsch' Midsummer party tradition stretches 13 years back through six different countries and this was their third party here in Abu Dhabi.
Last year we celebrated on their huge balcony, but this year they had organized for us all to have the Midsummer dinner on a dhow, at sea. It was absolutely lovely!

Of course we had to wait for the Ramadan cannons at sunset to be able to dig into all the lovely food, so in the meantime we all helped decorating the boat in blue and yellow colours:

Swedish girls and their flower wreaths, with Johanna:

All the ladies:

 And all the guys:

Happy Midsummer!!

We sailed out from Yas Marina, and further along the coast for about an hour before we turned back. Enjoyed some delicious food and drink and some sing-song sing-a-longs to Peter's guitar, and of course traditional strawberry cake.
Thanks to the breeze, it didn't really feel like the 37 degrees it still was even at night.

Together with Linda and Johan:

Returning into the marina you would've thought that the Viceroy knew we were having a Swedish celebration, as it was all lit up in blue and yellow too!

We had quite an interesting taxi ride together with the Midsummer pole... it had to stick out the window a little bit on one side to fit..:

Annica and I at the after-party: