Travel Fever

I didn't mean to sound super pessimistic yesterday :-D

I had a little bit of a better research today on the city of Manchester.

It seems that blogger Nelliina had a good time there so it cannot be that bad;-) I also found a website with Manchester markets. How cool isn't that? Seems they have markets for all holidays and for whatever you can think of. So that is good. I like markets. We're gonna have to check that out. Also Afflecks, that Nelliina mentions seems to be a store to check out.

As we are staying on Liverpool road I think we will have a stroll up to the Manchester Cathedral and down Market street to Piccadilly Gardens. At some point we will make a walk or jump on the bus to the University area to see my friend who is doing a master in Manchester.


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And perhaps if we are brave enough we'll take a ride in the Manchester Eye:

Fun

This Manchester seems to be full of museums and those sort of sihtseeing things you really don't wanna spend time on when you have only a miserable day and a half in the city. I even went as far as google-ing Manchester + fun.

This is what came up as a first choice:



I can't wait to be there.

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Challenge

Today was not the best day for a this year's first bike ride.



It wasn't snowy when I left home!

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Manchester

There's been so much other things going on I almost forgotten we are flying to Manchester on the weekend because I won the tickets from Easyjet.

Easyjet which have decided to stop flying from Finland in July anyway, so if this was some kind of marketing trick it was kind of a flop.

In any case, anyone who has been in Manchester? Any tips on what to do there?


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Happiness can be small things

Faro was extra happy this weekend on the countryside because he knew there was elk steak on the table and he'd get some sooner or later.




We were trying to get the snow away from outside the sauna so we could get in. This resulted in many snow blocks he could run after and catch...Until he was tired.



















In the end he had a relaxing time in the sofa reading the newspaper with the help of my dad:




Sometimes I'm just as happy as the dog for these small things, life takes a different pace as soon as you get out of the car in this place. I usually relax so much I hardly get anything done in Liljendal but maybe that is good sometimes - to not do anything.

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The Prince in the House

Faro is treated like a prince everytime we are at the country side:)



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Location:Järvitie,Liljendal,Finland

Simple Math

The dogpark yesterday was all ice and dog poops. The possibility of ending up in a pile of shit was therefor higher than usual.











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Hint

Ok, I give you a hint about the spice. It's not spice and look in the down left corner.

I might as well tell you it is my face cream :-) I was probably a bit absent minded last night...

Spot the "New" Spice

Haha! Stefan sent me this pic of our spicecupboard in the morning saying: "if you look carefully you will see a new spice. Let's use it next time we do pasta! :)"

Can you spot it?

Movie Time

I haven't been to the movies in ages and now it seems I'm gonna make it 3 times in a week!

On Sunday we saw Rango with Stefan

Today we saw Black Swan with Cia

And on Friday I'm gonna see Svinalängorna with a friend if all goes according to plan.

Btw, the movie theatre had a Parrots store where you could buy nuts and dried fruits instead of candy and popcorns. I thought it's a great idea, a healthier snack :) I had to try some wasabi nuts but they were not really that good...best was just the normal cashew nuts and a Mexican chili snack.




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Location:Pajamäentie,Helsinki,Finland

Faro's Gourmet Dinner

Some left-over chorizo and rice and dogfood.







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Stockholm pics

Stockholm by night



Excellent waffles







Traditional Swedish food









We ate Columbian arepas with these two lovely ladies:)





View close to our hotel. We've been here before when Stefan was still an exchange student.



Walking in the old town

Dinner

Today we had finally a dinner with Enkeli and her boyfriend. Very nice company and good food yet another time :-)



We also took Faro to the dog swimming pool today after a long time. He enjoys it so a lot and we also get a reward for taking him there as he takes it easy for the rest of the day after having used his energy in the swimming pool.

Breakfast

Yesterday our dinner guests brought lots of fruit so we are starting the day with a fruitsalad. Yammi:)




Btw, forget what I wrote about spring-it's snowing!:-S

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Spring is in the air

I just took Faro for a quick walk before going to bed and now is the first time this year that I really felt like spring is on its way. Might have been the smell or the fact that the wind was not freezing you to the bone but actually felt like a nice breeze.

I could really use some springtime now. This time of the year I always feel ugliest. Pale as a corpse, dry skin, dry scalp and dry hair and split ends even if it's not long time since I was at the hairdresser:( not that nice.

If tomorrow is sunny a long wall with Faro would be just the thing I need.


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The Retro exhibition

I am still not on super well terms with my phone again but I wanted to tell you about the Retro exhibition we went to in Stockholm. It seems it is very popular in Sweden with second hand and ecological stuff. Almost everything was ecological or organic, which suits me fine- it's nice if they think about the environment. Anyhow, so I heard about this retro exhibition and wanted to go check it out because they were selling ear-rings made out of old porcelain pieces (check their website out here).

In the end I found two cute pairs.

This pair is not made from porcelain but from recycled material as well.



And this is the porcelain pair, I think I could have bought several pairs though! :-)


Otherwise it was like taking a trip back in time walking around there:




I thought these were cute and colourfull:




And I'd love to have one of these one day:





Funny thing, we found these glasses. We had a couple of the same in our house in Liljendal but I didn't like them so we sold them for pretty cheap in the fleamarket...seems we should have charged a bit extra for them;-)



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Back from Holiday

Sweden was great-except for the weather, which was not bad but not great:-)

We just picked up our lovely dog from my parents-I think my mum was even sad to leave him :-) Faro was for sure sad to leave the country side were he has been able to run freely and has gotten loads of attention and good food, so it has been a good holiday for him too.

Curious thing of the day: we ended up giving two gypsies a ride to the gas station because they had run out of gas on the motorway. Sadly enough I do have prejudgements about gypsies and moved my handbag to the front seat when they got into the car, they seemed nice though.

Seems it didn't help my Karma though as my phone crashed while doing an update and now it seems I have to restore the factory settings-which on an iphone means I will loose a LOT of apps and stuff I have downloaded :-(

I guess it is my bad as I almost never plug it to the computer and therefore don't have any good back-up either. But do I feel like dropping it from our balcony on the 6th floor and turn my back on technology forever-Yes I do.

Kind of Happy we are only travelling to Sweden

How to empty a fridge

Every time before we go on a trip I go through the fridge and the cupboards because you don't wanna come home after a holiday and find that the cheese is blue and green and has developed an ecosystem of it's own.

The problem is though that I feel bad throwing away food that is ok to eat still. (I feel bad throwing away food that has gone bad too but some of it is luckily still ok for the dog) Good thing is that you have to be creative then. So today I cooked some pasta of the last tomatoes and mushrooms and sprinkled the cheese on top.

Dessert no 1 was bananas with chocolate in the oven. It doesn't look that nice but it is yammi and so easy to do. Split the banana half open with a knife and stuff it with a row of dark chocolate squares. Wrap it in aluminium foil and leave in owen for 10-15 min in 200 degrees.



Dessert no 2 was "fattiga riddare" (means poor knights), no idea how to translate that, is it perhaps called "French bread" in English? Anyway you just dip white bread or bun in a mix of milk, egg and cinnamon ( and sugar if you use bread and not a bun), and fry it. Serve with jam. If you add cream the "poor knights" become rich ones:)





I think the second desert will have to be breakfast tomorrow though. Like this we will go to Sweden fat and happy.

Hopefully we'll burn the calories while walking in Stockholm!

Women's Day

Happy International Women's Day!

For some reason I thought it was already last Friday but sometimes I just mix things like that. I hope my friend was not too confused when I wished her happy birthday and women's day on the wrong day. Luckily I got the birthday day right.

Dogs and Humans

Happened to turn on the TV in the right time today-saw an interesting documentary on dogs and humans.

One of my favorite parts was about how dogs are the only animal that can read our body langague so well. The chimpanzee does not recognize the pointing of a finger as a help for showing under which cup the treat is-whereas the dog is interpreting that correct. The dog was even able to pick up where a persons eyes were looking and go there.

From here at least Finns can still see the documentary for until 14.3, the part with the chimpanzee is at about 20 min into the program.

Unfortunately I did not find that part on youtube but here is a small part of the documentary:



It's interesting that they have been following us for such a long time, perhaps that is why they have learned to know us so well. I wonder though if we understand dogs half as well as they understand us.

Snowfun

It's a nice sunny day so we've done some retrieving training with Faro and after that Sfefan tried some cross-country skiing again, it's been some time since last. We also finally tried the snowshoes my dad bought this winter.

Faro to the rescue when my mum fell with the skies.












Snowman tracks
















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Location:Järvitie,Liljendal,Finland

Jijonenca

My collegue has been in Tenerife on holiday and brought some chocolate to the office.





Yammi chocolate from Alicante, Spain. I'm gonna gain a few kilos today I think...


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Gazpacho in a jar

I saw this in the store the other day:








I wonder if it is any good...Stefan has once done his own gazpacho for us and it was ok but I wouldn't necessary do it again. I have never really liked tomato soup so maybe that is why it didn't suit my taste buds.

Gazpacho according to wikipedia for the once who does not know what it is :)