The reason for this trip was that Tomi’s mother, and my mother-in-law, turned 80 this July. However, we missed the actual birthday, since we were attending the FIFA Women’s World Cup third place match on that day. Everything started when we bought the last minute tickets to that match. Then […]
End of the year is probably not the best time to visit Finland, when it is cold, grey, and dark there, and especially Northern Finland, where the Sun stays below the horizon all day. However, that did not stop us from enjoying our week before Christmas in Helsinki, Tampere and […]
It was only the second time we entered the lottery to participate in Berlin marathon and we were lucky. So, we took our training seriously; we started in early 2018 when there were more than 30 weeks to go, though because of traveling we took some weeks off or did […]
We made a day trip to Carcassonne to visit the old walled city. We were happy to be there early before the crowds took over in the afternoon. The downside was that after exploring the town, we had more than an hour to spend before any of the restaurants opened […]
Toulouse is called “The Pink City” because of the distinct orangeish pink bricks used in many buildings, … … and bridges. We spent six days in Toulouse where Tomi was invited to give a talk in a conference. Tei spent those days exploring the city and its parks. The city […]
This winter we have prepared quite a few slow cooking dishes, mainly with some sort of meat. Especially after we started to patronize Intermarché, which sells cheap cuts of meat for very reasonable price, sometimes as low as 6 euros per kilo. The downside is that one has to buy […]
This past weekend we visited Lyon to fulfill our civic duty to vote on the first round of our presidential elections. We certainly would like it better if our elections were at some other time of the year than January; the weather was miserable, cold, and it rained all the […]
Tomi’s parents stayed with us for a week before Christmas. We rented a car and took them to all three mountain ranges around Grenoble. First, we took them on Vercors range, and drove from Villard-de-Lans to Pont-en-Royans through the gorgeous gorges of the Bourne river. We got a bit lost […]
Seeing Taj Mahal live has been on my bucket list since the first time I really started listening to him play on the online radio I listen at work. He is a very avid tourer, but never before has he been this close to us. When I found out that […]