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 […]
In November we have had two back-to-back long weekends, All Saints Day a week ago and the Armistice this past weekend. We spent the former in Lyon, and this time escaped to the Vercors mountains, maybe the first time since we moved to the opposite direction from Grenoble. The plan […]
Exceptionally, we did not spend the first day in the town, but went for a hike from the port of Vannes (I don’t remember why we made this decision — maybe the weather forecast for that day looked more promising). Actually we had planned a lot longer hike (~18K) that […]
Carnac is known for its rows of menhirs (standing stones) and dolmens (portal tombs), but before we started our hike to them, we made short tour in the town. As said, Carnac is known for its sites of rows of standing stones (in some other parts of the world similar […]
Then it was time to move on again. Our next destination was Quimper, which we chose for no particular reason other than it being smaller than the port town of Brest. On our way to Quimper we stopped by in the town of Huelgoat (Finistère) to hike in its mythical […]
Next our rental vehicle took us to the small town of Carhaix-Plouguer (Finistère), our home for the next three nights. We arrived early and had quite a long wait before we could check in at our Airbnb apartment. For some reason several hosts in this trip were quite inflexible with […]
We spent the second week at Tomi’s parents’ house in Kangaslampi in Eastern Finland. Kangaslampi is another Finnish commune on the brink of extinction — the school was closed this summer. Its only hope is to cater to Summer tourism and visitors who have their Summer houses in the area. […]
The Tour of Sarrasine and The Dentelles of Montmirail This post wraps up our short vacation in Southern France, mostly Gard and Vaucluse departments. This hike traveled in Gigondas, that is a French wine Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée (AOC) in Southern Rhône wine region, producing mainly red wine and little rosé. […]
Pont du Gard This was the last brutally windy day of our vacation. On the other hand the wind was blessing since the afternoon became really hot (it was +29°C when we returned to the car). Our destination of the day was Pont du Gard, an ancient Roman aqueduct bridge […]