Our return flight from Madrid took off about thirty minutes after the scheduled time, but still landed in Lyon on time. Since bus connections from the airport to city center did not look very convenient, we were lazy and took a taxi to hotel Victoria in Perrache quarter on the […]
We had a lovely week-long vacation in Spain. Our two goals were to run the Zurich Rock’n’Roll Marathon in Madrid after 11 years, and visit our friends in Chinchón whom, likewise, we had not seen in 11 years. Except for a couple of navigational glitches, problems with locking the car, […]
We started the summer season with an easy hike at the lower slopes of the Vercors range near Grenoble. This was the area where we did our very first hike just three days after moving to Grenoble. Except for a short attempt for a wintry hike five years ago (the […]
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 […]