Besides the concert in Tampere, this was the part of our vacation that I looked forward to the most: almost two weeks at Tomi’s parents’ house in Kangaslampi in North Savonia region in Eastern Finland. As usual, we had the house to ourselves since the parents live in an apartment in the nearby terraced (row) house. Here are some pictures I took around the house on our last day:

Our days in Kangaslampi consisted of early morning runs and rest of the days spent working on our respective projects. A couple f times we drove to the nearest bigger town Varkaus for groceries. We mostly run on the road  to Pisamaniemi direction, but also on trails in Itkonsaari nature reserve. The trails have existed there “forever”, but now an EU-funded project had finalized the signposts, rest/picnic places, and information boards about the local natural history to make it a real nature destination for locals and visitors.

There were a couple of greyer days, but mostly the weather stayed nice, not too cold, not too warm. Only one afternoon we got a heavy downpour with the sun almost shining.

On one of our last days we drove to Varkaus to have lunch with my parents-in-law at the restaurant Keskuskonttori. The restaurant is located in the former historic A. Ahlström headquarters of the Varkaus factories, which is the oldest public building in Varkaus, dating back to 1840. The former offices are all furnished and decorated in different styles, and serve as cabinets for buffer lunch guests. The restaurant is also a cat café, so you can expect to have furry company even in the toilet.

On our last day we drove a little further to Härkämäki observatory (Taurus Hill observatory) to run/walk the nature trail on the hill. The observatory is an observation site of an amateur astronomical association Warkauden Kassiopeia ry. The construction began in 2002 and was completed in 2004. Today, in addition to the observatory and research facilities, there is also a clubhouse that offers accommodation services, and a sauna!

To finish this post I have to mention that there were a lot of blueberries and lingonberries this year. Unfortunately  we could not take them with us, but tried to enjoy them as much as possible while there. We also had the luxury of Tomi’s father bringing us freshly caught fish (pike-perch) on several days, as well as freshly picked chanterelles.