Discover Finnish forests...

I've just had a look at an interesting webpage made by a Finnish timber company :
http://w3.upm-kymmene.com/upm/forestlife/index.html?OpenDocument/#lang=0

There you can walk in a typical Finnish forest, listen to the sounds of birds and animals, watch them, learn many things about forest ecosystems. Really interesting and you feel like being in Finland ;-)

Holidays in Finland - Helsinki (3rd - 6th August)

After 10 days spent in the middle of nowhere (we were in an island in the Saimaa region), and before going back to France, we stopped 3 days in Helsinki (of course!). Almost nothing has changed since 2005 (but it’s quite strange to see so many tourists! It seems to be very fashionable to go to Finland now…). Esplanadi, Porthania, Café Engel, the railway station: everything is just the same (well, some shops have changed of course).

With Olivier, we decided to have a light sightseeing program and to visit the places we both didn’t know: Korkeasaari (the zoo), Kiasma (the modern art museum), the open-air museum of Seurasaari, and even Suomenlinna (I realized I knew only a part of it!). It was funny to discover Helsinki with renewed eyes!



During those 3 days, we also met Juan (who generously welcomed us in his flat) and his girlfriend Pirjo, and also Minna, my dear Finnish friend (Olivier was glad to meet a friend of mine who is vegetarian: be careful, they’re everywhere! ;-)
Unfortunately I couldn’t meet Fernando (he probably didn’t receive my message).



And finally, Vantaa airport again (I think I know this place by heart :-D) and flight back to France with a group of French tourists coming back from India (I found it suspect that so many French people would have chosen Finland for their summer destination ;-).

Now, back to Bordeaux for at least 4 months of intensive work :-(

Summer Holidays in Finland - the Lakes Region (23rd July – 2nd August)

Quite a well known destination for my summer holidays this year. But in a part I didn’t know (the Lakes Region) and in a season I had never experimented there.

Those 2 weeks were just GREAT!!! I was with my boyfriend Olivier, his son Léo, and part of his family (his parents, his brother with his wife and daughter). We stayed 10 days in their cottage near Savonlinna (a cute place with several red wooden buildings like the ones I’ve always dreamt of ;-).
The weather was quite nice almost all the time, so that we could go walking and picking berries and mushrooms, do canoe and sightseeing… Our program was more or less an alternance of excursions to some place and relaxing time in the cottage. And of course, each day ending with a good sauna and a bath in the lake J Just the holidays I needed!

We visited Savonlinna and its castle. Unfortunately we were there a week too late for the famous Opera festival (anyway, the tickets are quite expensive…). We went for a one-hour-cruise on the Saimaa Lake: all this water, it’s very impressive!
We also went for a day trip in the Eastern part of Finland, near the Russian border, to visit the Lapperantää fortress and to see the Imatra falls.

Our last excursion was dedicated to Punkaharju (a road in the middle of the water with lakes on both sides) and its museums: Lusto (forestry museum) and Retretti (the most famous art gallery in Finland).

As you can guess, this trip had a little nostalgic taste: I could eat Finish food again (pirakka, salmiakki, reindeer…) and I could remember some Finish words (after a few days, I felt almost like at home :-D).
We were very lucky because Olivier’s parents have Finnish friends there who invited us for dinner, first in a farm, then in a summer cottage: it was so nice and they were pretty happy to meet a French girl who had lived in Finland and who was fond of their country ;-)

Now that I’m back, what I miss the most is of course the sauna time before having dinner…

Ahhh, holidays…