We booked our year-end skiing vacation in Les Alberts in Vallée de la Clarée in Hautes-Alpes well ahead of time when skiing conditions still (or already) looked very promising (the same place, but not the same apartment, we stayed in December last year and then again in March) . Then […]
On one of our hikes in the Summer last year we saw this strange white building in the forest. When back home we checked the map and the searched the internet, and found out what this curious architectural project, built in 1966, was. Here you can read all about it, […]
The day following our last hike in Kotkatharju, we took train from Pieksämäki to Helsinki, where we spent a couple of days doing final purchases and picking up our eyeglasses. Then we flew back to Pisa, and spent two nights there. In Pisa we stayed in central but relatively quiet […]
The day following our first hike we took an extended weekend off from work — Monday was the French National Day — and visited Tomi’s family’s summer house on the island in Viljolahti, about a 22-kilometer drive and 10-minute boat ride away. The lake’s water level was so low that […]
The storm Ulla arrived in the evening of our arrival to Mänttä, bringing heavy rains and strong winds with her. The strong wind still prevailed in the morning but we headed out for a run nevertheless. Trails were quite muddy and the grass wet, and fortunately we decided to wear […]
We did not stay but one day in Helsinki both on our trip in and out from Finland. That was quite enough to squeeze in a morning run in a refreshing temperature, pay a visit to an optician to choose and order our new glasses, and then pick them up […]
While living in France we have not gone to concerts or theater anywhere near as much or often as we did in the US and Singapore — maybe because interesting artists and world class acts do not find themselves in this region, and traveling hours for a single performance or […]
This was a winter vacation we both have looked forward to since last Spring: a lot of skiing in the sunny and flat valley of Vallée de la Clarée in Hautes-Alpes near Italian border, but it turned out to be another wasted vacation because we both were sick. We did […]
Not this time. And not the vacation I was looking forward to! The plan was to do some scenic hikes in lovely, sunny December weather. None of that happened. The weather was dreary and grey — we only had sun on one day of our six-day trip — luckily it […]