Posts Tagged ‘in laws’

Finland

Monday, June 25th, 2012 | Travel

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.

Meeting the parent

Tuesday, July 19th, 2011 | Life

On Thursday, I met Elina’s mum.

She and her boyfriend are currently over in Leeds visting Elina and with it being her birthday, we decided to go out to dinner. We ended up at Las Iguanas because I presumed Elina was joking when she told me to sort out a restaurant, which was apparently a silly mistake lol.

It was always going to be an interesting evening as I don’t speak any Finnish and Riitta doesn’t speak any English, and as you all know, Elina isn’t the most chatty person ever 😀 . Still, a bottle of rioja later and things were fine.

We also found some common ground on our love of vodka and Riitta’s boyfriend told me about his career as a ship designer. So all in all, an enjoyable dinner and only slightly more awkward than introducing Elina to my parents.