Archive for the ‘Travel’ Category

While in Finland, we spent the final three days of our time in Finland with Elina’s family, in Laitila.

We tried to swim in a lake at 2pm, but it was still freezing cold at this time, so in the end we gave up and spent the day enjoying the sunshine from the bank.

This is a rose from Riitta’s garden. She has a lot of beautiful flowers.

The view from Henry’s garden.

Henry’s cat.

We spent Friday evening at a summer cottage by a lake. This is the view as the sun went down.

It was surprisingly warm when we went for a midnight swim.

I wasn’t particularly impressed by the Helsinki Sea Life Centre. It had some cool animals in it, and you did get to walk through a tunnel with sharks swimming over your head, but it was fairly small and over quite quickly.

The first photo is a shoal of piranhas. They just sit there waiting for something to happen; it’s quite unnerving. I took a video.

A dolphin skeleton. They don’t feel much likes the clowns of the sea when you see how many teeth they have.

Every single diorama in this museum depicted one animal eating another.

The history of life exhibit finished by talking about modern times – including a chainsaw, skateboard, first aid kit and mobile phone.

Roughly translated, this means “an exhibition on animal poo”.

Cathedral in Helsinki harbour.

Helsinki Cathedral.

View of the harbour as we took the boat to the zoo.

The Elina shop, were I took Elina for her check-up.

They don’t seem to have KFC in Finland, but they do have SFC.

The Finnish Parliament building.

Finland’s coastline as we flew home.

Finally, some panoramas…

Helsinki harbour. Click for full size.

The view from the observation point at Helsinki Zoo. Click for full size.

Given Elina’s hate of onions, I’ve occasionally joked I wanted to go to an onion restaurant that has a giant onion for a logo. Turns out there is one in Helsinki.

It wasn’t all serious business in Torquay – I got time to take some photos too.

Flying to Dublin we had to go with Ryanair as I couldn’t find anyone else doing the flight times we wanted.

I think it’s quite an expensive airline in comparison to Jet2. We wanted to sit together on the flight, but to reserve seats cost us £10 per person, per flight, so that was £40 down, and just to pay for the flight (on my Visa as they don’t accept American Express) cost me £6 per person, per flight, so that was £24 as well. Altogether that is an extra £64 added on top of the price, which is a lot.

The outgoing flight was then delayed by almost an hour, which is basically the entire flight time.

Thanks to a legal requirement to have emergency exits on planes though, I did get enough leg room to stretch out fully.

While in Dublin, we stayed at StayCity Serviced Apparents, so I thought I would share my thoughts on them.

When I originally tried to book online with Laterooms, it told me they had run out of available rooms and I had to call the Laterooms call centre. I did, and they confirmed there were no more rooms available, but suggested they could book me in at another StayCity just a few minutes away – and offer that I accepted.

Having turned up at said location, I was then told that we had actually been put in the original location. They were very nice about it and put is in a free taxi to the original location, where we found they had allocated a two bedroom apartment to us (couldn’t make use of it though as Elina insisted on sleeping in the same bed).

It was a bit run down, but when the serviced apartments I have to compare against it are Warwick and Oxford, you probably can’t expect the same standards. I can’t help but feel they were falling a little too much into stereotypes though by not providing any tall glasses, yet providing several types of wine glasses.

It was rather cold at first too as they had most of the windows opened when we arrived, so it took a while to warm up (and was never overly warm). It was also rather nosier than I was expecting when it came to trying to sleep.

The location was fantastic though – it was literally over the river from Temple Bar, so for the price and location, it still comes up as a good deal. Their wifi was good too. You do need a pass per device, but I had no problem streaming high-quality video.

To make the most of the bank holiday weekend, we headed over to Dublin. Despite having been all round Europe, I had never been to Ireland, so it seemed like good choice for somewhere to visit.

While there we made it round the Tall Ship Festival, Trinity College and the Book of Kells, Christ Church, Dublin Castle, the Wax Museum and the National Library. Unfortunately, we didn’t make it to the National Museum or Natural History Museum as they are closed on Mondays (it wasn’t a bank holiday in Ireland).

We also took in the nightlife at Temple Bar with a few different restaurants and pubs around that area, as well as the street artists. We eventually settled in at really cool place named the Bison Bar that had saddles for stools and bison and dear heads on the walls, as well as a superb range of whiskey (not that I benefited from such a collection).

Best moment? Definitely meeting SpongeBob at the wax museum!

It’s a great city, and well worth a visit, though given it has a flight time comparable with Paris, and I found Paris more beautiful and about the same price, I think I would opt to head back to the continent for a short break.

Now that I am self employed, I hate holidays. It’s fine to say, well I budget for that in my earnings, but when it actually comes to taking time off and doing the maths surrounding it, it’s very hard to make that decision.

Therefore, given I was forced to take a four day weekend for the Jubilee, we decided to fit in a cheeky trip to Finland to go see Elina’s family.

As if I didn’t hate flying enough, it turns out Finnair were running a new programme trial in which instead of feeding us, they didn’t feed us. Rubbish,

I had previous met her mum who provided us with a warm welcome and some amazing cooking. Indeed, she cooked so much that we ended up having beef and chicken for breakfast the next day too! I’m hoping it will become the new traditional Finnish breakfast.

It’s a really beautiful country and not called the land of a thousand lakes without good reason.

We had to drive through quite a bit of forest to get to the lakes. No wonder Finland produces so many rally drivers, it was ace.

On Monday we went to Turku, one of the larger cities where Elina went to university. It was mostly full of sex shops that offered live shows and a river that you would never want to drink from, but was nice never the less.

Then, in the evening, we travelled up north to Rauma so we could eat at a restaurant that served reindeer steak.

It was a lovely traditional restaurant, and the food was excellent.

After a long day of adventuring, Moomintroll was very tired.

Thank you so much to Elina’s mum and brother who put us up for the three days.