We spent the extended holiday weekend in the area where most of town and village names sounded like they were taken from Asterix. The area, called la Dombes, is an undulating plateau in the department of Ain consisting of 1200 ponds or rainwater pools that are man-made, most of them […]
This was the third time Martin Fourcade Nordic Festival was organized in Annecy, and the third time we attended. This year’s lineups for both biathlon and cross-country sprint races were quite impressive. There was supposed to be two Finnish biathlets, but on the race day we heard that one of […]
We briefly visited the French capital this past weekend to leave our passport applications at the consulate. The Paris consulate is the only place to for the Finnish expats to apply for a passport in France, and it’s been made extremely expensive compared to applying for the passport in Finland; […]
While the 2021 ended with the worst weather ever, the 2022 started with the best possible; for he whole January it was mostly sunny with nice winter-like temperatures. We rushed to book our week-long winter/skiing vacation in Serre Chevalier valley in Hautes-Alpes before the school vacations started, and we were […]
After a very short morning run in Pont-Saint-Esprit we packed ourselves in the car and started driving to Coux. On our way we stopped to visit the small village of Saint-Thomé in Ardèche. Climbing the steep trail to the village located on the top of the hill gave us a […]
Aurillac As usual, we spent the first day exploring the town we were based in. Aurillac, the capital of the Cantal department, is known for various things, such as being the Historic umbrella capital of France (half of the umbrellas produced in 1999 were made there), and its Cheese Center, […]
We just came back from a two-week vacation of which we spent the first week hiking in the Mounts of Cantal in the mid-west of the Massif Central, having the base in Aurillac, and the second week driving home, stopping on our way at various places for scenic hikes, mainly […]
It is the time for another post of our hiking holidays in the French Alps. This is mainly just to share pictures, since nothing exciting happened during those hikes; we barely saw another human being during them. The most thrilling events were the goat encounter on the second day, and […]
Our winter vacation plans were messed up with uncertainties involved in the apartment sale project, but once the date for signatures was fixed (see the previous post), we booked one week in our favorite place, Serre Chevalier Valley in Hautes-Alpes for a skiing vacation. But then we started seeing worrisome […]