Toisen Lontoo -kävelyn tahdoin tehdä vedellisessä ympäristössä, joten hyppäsin metroon ja ajoin King’s Cross asemalle, josta kävelin kanaalin varteen ja seurasin sitä Camden Towniin. Ensi kerralla Lontoossa taidan tutustua tähän kanaaliin SUP -laudalta.
Pääsiäisen jälkeisenä tiistaina tein kävelykierroksen Lontoon keskustassa. Lähdin kaupunginosasta nimeltä Fitzrovia ja kävelin British Museumille. Sen jälkeen yritin mennä käymään Sir John Soane’s Museumissa, mutta se olikin valitettavasti kiinni. Jatkoin sitten Covent Gardenille, jossa kävin mm. Aesopin liikkeessä. Sieltä sitten pikkuhiljaa palasin takaisin ja nautin loppumetreillä vielä yhden herkullisen pirtelön Five Guyssa. Kävelyä tuli mukavasti 6,22 km ja samalla sai nauttia Lontoon katunäkymistä ja kauniista rakennuksista.
Yksi suosikkipaikkani Lontoossa on British Museum. Se on hieno paikka. Sir John Soane’s Museum on myös kiva, olen käynyt siellä aikaisemmin, vaikken nyt päässyt.
Covent Gardenissa on putiikkeja, ravintoloita ja teattereita. Pääkohteeni siellä oli ihonhoitotuotteita myyvä Aesop. Luksusliike, jonka jokainen mymälä on erilainen ja erityinen. Covent Gardenin liike on väritykseltään valkea. Lion King on aivan upea musikaali kaikenikäisille.
Edellisenä päivänä olin käynyt Aesopin liikkeessä Chelseassa. Tämä liike on todella näkemisen arvoinen. Kuvassa näkyvä metallinen pöytäpinta on oikeasti vettä! Ja liikkeen värit ja kaaret ovat upeat. Kannattaa käydä vaikka vaan ihastelemassa arkkitehtuuria, mutta on tuotteetkin aika kivoja.
Seurasaaren ympäristössä ja ympäri olen vapaanveden aikaan monesti mennyt SUP -laudalla. Tänään valloitin saaren päästä päähän kävellen. Ulkomuseoalue ei ole auki talvisin, mutta ei se nyt ole varsinaisesti kiinnikään vaan Etelä-Pohjanmaalta tuotuja rakennuksia voi ihailla hyvin ulkoapäin. Saaren päässä törmäsimme puiseen rakennukseen (kuva 2), jonka esittelytekstissä luki, että siellä voi pitää vaikka palaverin, tai sitten vain hiljentyä hetkeksi. Saaren päädyssä herkistyin myös muistelemaan kesäistä SUP-retkeä saaren ympäri, jolloin kompuroimme leväisiä kiviä pitkin kelluttaen lautoja kivien ohi, se ei ehkä ollut paras reittivalinta (vaikkakin lyhyin). Kylläpä tuli kova ikävä kesää ja vesiretkiä.
Mutta oli mukava nähdä Seurasaari pitkästä aikaa maalta käsin, ja samalla sai nauttia ulkoilusta ja hyvästä keskustelusta retkeilijäseuran kanssa. Totesimme molemmat, että jopa näin pääkaupunkiseudalla on helppo hetkessä lähteä luontoon ja nauttia rauhasta ja jopa hiljaisuudesta, jos vain lähtee hitusen kauemmaksi vaikka johonkin Helsingin edustan saarista. Silloin ei enää kuulu Länsiväylällä huristavat autot, niinkuin ne tänään kuuluivat tasaisena kohinana jäisen meren yli.
Today the sun was shining so nicely that my mind is thinking and waiting for starting the SUP year 2018. There has been so cold for couple of weeks so that every lake, river and also the sea nearby Helsinki is frozen, so we need to wait couple of weeks/months to be able to paddleboard in Finland. But it is coming…
Meanwhile you can enjoy the winter. This week I have visited one modern art museum again, this time in Helsinki called Kiasma. There are several interesting exhibitions which are worth of seeing indeed. During the weekend I skied in Kirkkonummi, Peuramaa Ski and was also iceskating in Tapiola. This time Tapiola was bathing in the sunlight and that’s why my mind is already in the coming spring time.
Here are some photos taken these visits:
Kiasma
Outdoor activities
This weekend you have surely been able to enjoy the winter big time in Finland, weather has been excellent for outside activities. Myself I went iceskating on Saturday and downhill skiing on Sunday. Extra to that I visited a great museum in Espoo: EMMA (Espoo Museum of Modern Art). Even SUP is in it’s own league all of these was super!
See some pictures underneath from this weekend’s activities, I can highly recommend all of them.
Tapiola Ice Garden (link to webpage)
This weekend I was invited to join to my Spanish friend’s birthday party in Navacerrada, Madrid, Spain. Timing was good because the autumn season has arrived in Finland. It was still summer in Spain even the nights are getting chilly there. The daytime temperature was 25 and the sun was shining warmly, that is definitely summer for me.
Madrid and Navacerrada are located so that I couldn’t do any SUP there. But I enjoy the visit in many other ways.
Navacerrada:
On Saturday we visited in La Granja and Segovia. La Granja de S. Ildefonso is a royal palace and Segovia is a really, really beautiful town both in north from Madrid. To get there from Navacerrada, a holiday village 50 km north from Madrid as well, was needed to drive up to one mountain and going down. In Segovia there is a magnicifient aqueduct built by ancient Romans. It is a beauty and impresses everybody.
In Segovia itself is a nice Spanish town with cafeterias and restaurants, we ate well at a very nice one and had a cup of coffee in Plaza Mayor. Also there are couple of great buildings to see and visit: Cathedral and Alcazar.
La Granja:
Segovia:
On Sunday I spend a day in Madrid and visited a park called Retiro. There is a nice artificial lake where you can hire a rowing boat to enjoy the view. (No SUP available). I really enjoyed the moment, the temperature was bit higher than in up to mountains.
Madrid:
P.S. The birthday party on Saturday night was an once in a lifetime experience. House and location were so beautifull, food was excellent, music was good, dancing was so fun and people made me feel so welcome. Thank you Paz and Federico for the party!
Waterfalls are wonderful. There is one in the middle of the Nice city, on on top of the hill with a great view. You do not need take a bus to get there, just walking and climbing is needed and while doing that there is nice alleys and churches to see and visit.
Visiting in Eze village was on a to-do-list also this year, it is a nice place and also going there is a small trip itself. This summer we have taken buses a lot instead of taking trains mostly because we discovered that they are nice (you see different places) and easy (our hotel is actually located near to many bus stops), and last but not least we bought a seven day pass for Lignes D’azur lines so local buses are ‘free’.
Number 82 took us direct to Eze village and we climbed in a hot weather to the most top where the view is magnificent. Tuomas took a lot of photos when climbing up and on the top as well. It was real hot so the next stop was on the Eze beach. We took a bus number 83 to Eze railway station which is located near to the beach. There were a lot of people on the beach enjoying the Sunday sun and warm water.
I rented a SUP board but this time I enjoyed even more swimming in the warm sea. I also realized that Finland is actually very good place for SUP. There are different kind of rivers, lakes and sea coasts with variety of landscapes and water birds. You can really enjoy the SUP trip, not just concentrating on keeping standing on the SUP board going up and down on (monster) waves.
Near but in a way far away from Nice is an old touristic attraction place: a tyrol type house with waterfall. It is build in 1883 and is very cute as your can see in photos. The place itself was cool due to waterfall and the cave under the house. But the trip was hot, and it was turning to become almost too hot.
We took a bus number 25 from the Nice center to the direction Cernuschi to get to the Cascade de Gairaut. This bus goes just once an hour on Saturdays. The ride was very bumby and the road was climbing up and down in the mountains. It was ok, and good way to see places round the city, the bus trip took about one hour. Then we took off, admired the scene, took the pictures and enjoyed the coolness around the place. Then we started to wait the bus to go back to the city. It was really, really hot to stand in the bus stop (+32, no wind, no shadow). After ten minutes we saw the bus coming, we waved to stop it and the driver waved back and just drove ahead. The bus was not definitely fully booked. We saw no-one inside.
What the #¤%&/&¤! It is hot here, do we need to stay here an hour more!!!!! A small village road,in the middle of nowhere. The sun is shining, it will burn us, it will kill us!!
After thinking two seconds we decided to change the direction and go to the bus directing Cernuschi to get in to that bus because it should come sooner than the next one to heading towards Nice. And it came in another 10 minutes and it stopped and we were so happy about that. We were rescued!
In the end what happened was that in a few minutes we landed in a very urban place and realized that there is a tram stop front of us. Quick checkup from the bus driver “yes, the tram stop is on the left”, “merci!” very fast act of leaving the bus and walking to the tram stop.
So thank you the first bus driver for not taking us to the bus. We were much faster back to the Nice city with the new route.
At the moment in Finland it is raining and having a cold July. But it does not matter if you are in sunny French Riviera. And we are. Smiling. Smiling. Yesterday we took a train to Cannes to make a small boat trip to the historical island called Sainte Marguerite. Crossing the sea to the island took about 15 minutes, which was a nice refreshing moment in a sea wind when a temperature is +32 and the sun is shining in a sky where is no clouds at all.
After a short but very nice boat trip we arrived in the island. Travel guides tell that the island is an old monastery island and it is a quiet place to have relaxing moment away from the hectic urban atmosphere. It is. And at the same time it also well organized with two restaurants and several small kiosks so you can easy find soft drinks and ice cream when needed. And you need those in that kind of heat.
In the island you can walk around and see different kind of forestry types and different kind of birds on the artificial pond. Only bad thing was that it was really, really hot for a walk and you really enjoyed to stand under the trees to be in shadows but the trees were magnificent indeed.
We visited also in a Fort royal and Maritime museum, which was a reasonable size of museum having an interesting collection of roman archaeological findings from the area and also interesting stories from the 17th century when the island was a prison for the people which the king himself felt to be a risk for the monarchy. The most famous prisoner was the Man in the Iron mask.
The island was definitely worth of visiting. The cost of boat trip was 14 euros per person and every needed fanta and ice cream was fun to eat and drink anyway.
