Happy Valentines Day to everyone! I thought since Valentines Day is a romantic holiday, I will write about our wedding anniversary trip we did last autumn with my husband. Althought it is more of a travelling story than a romantic one but anyway I felt it´s a good time to write about it today.
For few years now we have made a weekend trip with my husband around our wedding anniversary. Our son is not a kid anymore so we feel like it´s time to take more time for us two. So we headed to the eastern Finland with our caravan car. Our destination was in Sotkamo at Vuokatti but we left a day before to first visit Koli (read older post here). Evening was foggy and rainy so we just parked our car to sleeping mode. I woke up really early to a migraine I suffer from time to time, so I took my medication and went out for a walk, it always helps a little. And it was worth to wake up so awful way since the morning was really beautiful. Sun was shining and it was so quiet. Nobody else was awake there yet, well few black-throated divers that did´t really care about my presence, they just kept fishing on the lake. I walked a road between the Koli national park area and the lake Pielinen. I love those quiet morning moments.
When I headed back to our car my medication had work its magic and my husband had woken up too. So we moved the breakfast for later and drove up to Koli hills to see how the morning looked like up at the hill. A lot different than my morning walk but beautiful in different way. Some thin fog clouds had flown on the lake and the sun that shined through them gave everything this silverly look. The contrast to what had been half an hour before was huge.
On the top of Koli
Next we turned the car towards Vuokatti and arrived there just in time to watch some roller ski competition with most of best cross country skiers of Finland. When we booked our hotel we had no idea there´s going to be an event like that but it was a big plus since both of us had always wanted to see roller ski races. I like to ski with my rollers skis too but I would never have the courage to go so fast with them, well I could only go so fast to downhill anyway….
Next night was a little bit of luxury with spa, eating well and sleeping in a suite with our own sauna. Not that we would have really needed our own sauna when Vuokatti spa had so many different saunas from smokesauna to a sauna with walls made of salt. Great place for a tourist to test all sorts of Finnish saunas.
Morning meant that it was time to head home but we made one linger stop on the way. That was to one of Finlands national landscapes, Väisälänmäki at the town of Lapinlahti. It´s on the hill (mäki means a hill) and there´s a beautiful view to surrounding areas.
The history of the area also involves Kaski fires, kaski meaning slash-and-burn, when they burn woodland areas to make fields. A Finnish painter Eero Järnefelt painted one of his best know paintings “Under the Yoke” ( Burning the brushwood) at the area. You can see the photo of it in our blog text about Helsinki. It was the main reason to visit Ateneum art museum to see the landscape we saw in real live as a painting made in 1893. They still maintain the fields as cultural landscapes and cows work in landscaping. They keep the fields open and the landscape how it use to be. At Väisälänmäki there´s also a little cafe in the summertime, really cute place! We just had to have a cup of coffee there before heading home. We had really nice and relaxing weekend together and I can´t wait our next years trip.
Finland with small steps 