Lisbon, Portugal - 22nd April 2011
By: Eohippus
Bom dia, mom! And hi to everyone else too!
Yesterday I was so sleepy after the long journey that I slept and slept until Veronica and Rendolph woke me up today and it was allready lunch time. So I just hopped straight to the lunch table.
We were having a typical portuguese dish made of locally grown chicken peas, wonderful olives and delicious salad.
And some fruit for dessert. Gosh the fruit are delicious here - they are bought from the nearby market place, and most of them come from the little gardens of local people.
After finishing our lunch (a bit too much! ) I took my first peep outside from the balcony. The weather looked a bit cloudy, but we decided to go out anyway.
We walked along the the Tejo riverfront and watched other turists and the fish jumping in the river and the seagulls trying to catch the fish.
I almost started to feel peckish again..
Here I am under the older bridge over Tejo, named "Ponte 25. de Abril". 25.4 is a very important date here - the date of the year 1974 "Carnation revolution".
There was some wonderfully blooming trees growing on the avenue. I was trying how it would feel to nest in one of those. Not bad!
We were walking on the train tracks, playing to be little engines, making all sorts of funny noises, and some turists were watching us a bit long, but we just went on.
We saw the statue of Amália Rodrigues, who was the most famous fado singer of all times.
And a nice red lighthouse and a cute little ferry going over Tejo. Tomorrow we will take a ride with one of those.
And a tail of a rainbow. I wonder what kind of treasure we could find there..
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Posted Apr 22, 2011, 8:10 pm Last edited Apr 25, 2011, 11:13 am by Eohippus
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Trafaria, Portugal - 25th April 2011
By: Eohippus
Olá de novo, dear mom! Hi again!
Yesterday we took the little ferry over the river Tejo to a small village called Trafaria. Its most inhabitants are fishermen, which sounded very appealing and njammy to me (not the men, but their prey, I mean.
The sky was dark and promised rain to come. I was watching the seagulls making sudden dives from the sky after some fish or after each other.
The fresh air from the sea and the rocking of the boat was propably affecting our brains, we started to sing sea shanties sitting on a bench on the deck.
The seagulls passing buy were trying to cover their ears and the other passangers fled inside to the ferrys cabin.
It started to rain, and Henna ushered us inside too (she has no mercy, thinking of the other passangers.. or maybe her sympathies just lay on the seagulls side).
So we just watched the rainy river through the window and discussed such interesting subjects as "can fish get a flue when the water cools down in autumn".
Arriving to Trafaria
The beach was full of little fishing boats. Maybe the fishermen stayed on dry land because of the easter, who knows..
Henna had heard that the sea air is good for the lungs and told us to breath deep, and that's what we were doing.
Then we run around investigating everything - feathers and seashells and tree trunks and whatnot we could find on the sand.
Here we are sailing the sands wearing the helmets of great explorers.
Then the rain came heavier and heavier and we left back home.
And there was an surprise egg waiting for each of us!
Here is some pics showing us with them.
Kisses from your little kiwi bird, mom! See you soon again!
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Posted Apr 25, 2011, 11:03 am Last edited Apr 25, 2011, 11:15 am by Eohippus
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Pias, Portugal - 3rd May 2011
By: Eohippus
Estou aqui de novo, mom!
My last update ended into a bit awkward situation because Henna was pissed of with us toys.. so the next two days we were behaving like little angels, helping a lot in the gardening and all..
Here we are picking lemons. First we climbed up to the trees and hopped over the lemons so that they dropped down the earth and then we collected them. (And played with them, just a little!)
Then we were taking care of different flowers.
The figs were not ripe yet, what a shame!
But the loquats were! Njom njom njom! I think we managed to pick more than we ate..
Then we were taking care of the huge beans!
I had a special mission to save the beans from the snails who were eating them.. oooh my little stomach was almost too full soon!
After hard working we were resting a bit and started to feel certain emptines in our stomachs again.
It seemed that Hennas views on "holiday in countryside" differed somewhat from ours.. ours include for example such a thing than lunch, but hers doesn´t. She was so enchanted by all the gardening that she forgot all about it, and so we decided to be independent.
We rummaged trough the fridge to see what we had there and decided to try to make a traditional local dish called "Bacalhau ā Brás".
The main ingredients are:
Bacalhau = codfish
[color=green][size=2] onion, garlic and sweet potatoes, which are all cutted into small cubes.
Then are all fried and mixed together, and then we added some eggs too.
The cupboards of the house were full of fantastic antique tableware! We didn´t dare to use any of those!
Luckily we found some more simple plates. Then we were eating!!!
And THEN I had some more fruit!
And THEN Veronica and Rendolph ushered me to hop on the scales.. uh oh, mom.. Although I am not quite sure to what specific species of kiwi birds I belong to, and I know there is one species were the approximate weigh for females is about 3 kg..
In the evening we made a fire into the fireplace and were sitting there until we slept.
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Posted May 3, 2011, 12:48 pm
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Sintra, Portugal - 8th May 2011
By: Eohippus
Sintra forest, part 1.
Hi, dear mom!
Want to hear what we have been doing after we came back from Alentejo?
Well, after all that mad gardening in the southern heat it felt really good when after our return to Laranjeiro the weather turned cooler.
We have been enjoying the cloudy skies and the possibility to roam around without our straw hats, though I have been told from many directions that I look really cool in it!
So we made a trip to Sintra forest, which is a holy place from ancient times. Before christianity came here, the Sintra area was religiously important place with its moon- and sun hills.
We avoided the turistic routes and took instead a secret path, only known to few people..
We were climbing over some walls, trough private lands..
Over fallen tree giants
Having a snack on the road..
We met interesting plants, like this Digitalis Purpurea (common foxglow, says wikipedia) They grow here wild everywhere.
And this Ruscus Aculeatus, butchers broom, which roots give a help for vernacular troubles, says Henna.
The berries are not edible, what a shame - they looked delicious!
This is a bay laurel, Laurus Nobilis. Their leaves are used to spice up soups and here also the olives.
We decided to visit a moorish castle ruins over on top of a hill in middle of the forest. So we started to climb upwards.
Now i have to leave us climbing upwards the steep hillside, because we are going to see an art exhibition.
I´ll go on with the story later! Wait for the sequel, mom!
Kisses from your little kiwi!
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Posted May 8, 2011, 2:52 pm Last edited May 8, 2011, 10:36 pm by Eohippus
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Sintra, Portugal - 9th May 2011
By: Eohippus
SIntra forest, part 2.
Olá, mãe amada! Here I am again to continue our trip trough Sintra.
The art exhibition we saw yesterday wasn´t very interesting, although there was works by one painter I liked a lot, Lima de Freitas. Have you ever heard about him, mom?
So, we climbed upwards the rocky hillside, using all our possible limbs to get hold of something. Veronica was happily flying upwards, though..
While we get near the top we could see the Pena palace far away. It worked as a kings castle for some of the portuguese royalty before the first revolution.
We reached the castle walls and rummaged trough the ruins.
Originally, the castle was built by the Moors, between the 9th and 10th centuries, but the place itself has been inhabited since the mesolithic stone age.
We could see the little town of Sintra, it's streets crammed with turists like an anthill.
That´s where the railway station is where we started our trip upwards. Just watch how high your little bird has climbed, mom!
This photo we wanted because of the beautiful flowers and the portuguese flag.
When we had admired the green landscape enough we decided to climb down again and dive into it.
And so we did, mom. Look at these trees!
What magnificent trees! No wonder the place is considered holy.
For some time we were just laying on the ground, watching at the tree tops, and let the world go around..
Then we went to admire the trees nearer..
There is ivy covering the trunks everywhere. The local people call ivy "hera", like the old greek goddess.
I'm sure this is rather near to my natural habitat, do you think so, mom? I feel so good here!
We continued our wandering enchanted by the forest.
Certainly this seems like a place where it would be possible to meet elves..
We climbed still over one wall, to see the forgotten part of Pena palace gardens..
Part of it is kept, open for turists for a nice fee, but the rest of it is shut and forgotten, overgrown and wild. We headed there.
There was camellias, roses and rhododendrons growing big as forests, hiding old abandoned buildings under..
Some hundred years ago they planted here different ferns and even fern trees to delight a portuguese queen, and now those have spread too.
Yippee, mom, fern trees!
We spent the whole day just peacefully strolling around and watching all the miracles we encountered, enjoying the silence and all the wonderfull smells..
This is a place I want to come back sometime in future, that's for sure!
This was Sintra forest I wanted to share with you all, and especially with you, mom! Do you feel like travelling to Portugal already?
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Posted May 9, 2011, 1:39 pm
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Cabo da Roca, Portugal - 10th May 2011
By: Eohippus
Haha, mom! It is the second day we are staying at home here in Laranjeiro, because Henna "has to read to an exam" as she says..
Yesterday we were fighting over the comp keyboard because we all needed it to make our updates, and Rendolph managed to lock me and Veronica into the toilet for couple of hours.
It all ended into a huge fight with water balloons and then we toys came into an agreement and now we have locked Henna into the toilet and the comp is ours! Muhahaha!
You should hear how she is shouting! Although she is using some words I would not write here! Rendolph is writing some of them down in a small notebook he always carries with him.
I will show you now some pics of a trip we made to Cabo da Roca, which is the westernmost point of mainland Europe.
We took a bus from Cascais to Cabo da Roca.
I bought a bus ticket too, as you can see, but Veronica and Rendolph were hiding in Hennas backbag! Tut tut!
When we stepped out of the bus all the other travellers headed to the official viewpoint or to the shop selling souvenirs and icecream, but Henna ushered us towards some odd paths.
But really, mom, the landscapes we were wandering into were so beautiful that I forgot all about icecream at least for 20 minutes!
Haha, Veronica said she felt like some Adelheid in Swiss Alps and Rendolph said he must then be a goat. That left the part of grandfather for me then.
It was very windy and we had troubles to stay upwards, and Henna had to carry us forward every now then.
Even poor Veronica could not fly - the wind almost carried her to the sea.
Behind us is the Cabo da Roca lighthouse. Around it is still some small buildings where the lighthouse keepers were living before its mechanisation.
We were getting nearer and nearer the brink of the coastal cliffs and could hear the ocean clearer and clearer.
It was already hard to keep any kind of discussion going on, the wind took half of every word somewhere with it.
I was thinking of flying.. even for a kiwi bird it could be possible to fly in that kind of wind - I would only need some kind of cardboard plakes to strengthen my wings and run against the wind and jump up to the air.. I didn´t mention my idea to Henna, I know what SHE would think about it, but maybe some day if we manage to lock her into the toilet again..
At last we saw the seashore itself towards which we were making our way.
The trail was going downwards very steeply and it was partly almost non-existent, so we were going on rather slowly and sitting down every now and then to admire the view.
When we reached the sealevel (after hundred meters climbing downwards, crying out loud!) we sat down for some time to get our breath back and then we started to explore the beach.
There were some fast little lizards running between the stones hunting for insects, too much in a hurry to chat with us.
But they were giggling to us and asking "Soon you have to climb the same route upwards, have you thought about that?" of course we had.
We spent some time just watching the wawes before we started to climb back up.
We climbed slowly..
making many little pauses..
When we reached the road again we RUNNN to the ice cream booth and devoured two big ice cream balls everyone!
See you soon again! I think we have to let Henna out of the toilet now, she is saying something about not giving us any kind of sweets for a month!
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Posted May 10, 2011, 1:08 pm
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Nuuksio, Finland - 20th May 2011
By: Eohippus
Hi mom!
Do you know where your little kiwi bird is now?
Who could have guessed, after my latest update,
but here we are now in a little red cottage, in middle of Nuuksio forest, in the other end of Europe, Finland, that is.
Our latest week in Portugal was very boring.
Henna became suddenly very ill and spent the whole week in toilet!
Well, she has my deep sympathy, and we toys we were trying to nurse her and all, but on the third day we started to feel rather bored.
So we were very happy to fly here last tuesday, and now Henna is getting better and we will soon be ready to go exploring again!
This is the last pic I took in Laranjeiro, from the balcony of our apartment there.
There was a prossession passing our house, carrying a figure of the holy Madonna somewhere. We asked Henna where is the madonna going, but she shouted from her toilet that she has no idea, maybe she just needs a stroll around.
Here I am early on tuesday morning, sitting on the aeroplane, waiting it to get up to the sky.
Ooooooh the raising to the sky, trough the clouds, was just amazing! Some of the clouds looked like fluffy sheep and I felt like petting them.
We were admiring the clouds and the miniature landscape whenever we could see it between the clouds.
Untill we started to wait our meal.
It was rather horrid, though, and Henna started to look greenish just because of the smell of it, and so we put it mercifully aside.
We had to change planes in München, where we were waiting two hours, amusing ourselves by watching planes and driwing in the luggage charts.
AFter landing to Helsinki aeroport, a Hennas friend took us home to Nuuksio with his car, and now we are here.
This little cottage is where Henna lives here in Finland.
Isn´it cute?
It is almost hard to believe that someone is still living like this nowadays!
Veronica was showing us around.
There was lots of buttercups around the cottage!
And a swing!
The first rhabarberums were ripe!
We are going to make wonderful soup out of it!
We were also testing the hammock.
And veronica was showig us the little gazebo where we can sit drinking our tea, if it happens to rain.
After Portugal, the milder temperatures of finnish may feel very wellcome! Everything is so fresh and green!
I´ll write soon again, mom! Now we are going to pick some rhabarberums!
Love, Zoe.
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Posted May 20, 2011, 8:19 pm Last edited May 21, 2011, 10:09 pm by Eohippus
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Nuuksio, Finland - 21st May 2011
By: Eohippus
Hyvää päivää, mom!
That is "good day" in finnish. Veronica was teaching us some basic expressions today while we were making a short walk to see the nearest neighbourhood of our little cottage.
I´ll show you some pics of the things we saw today.
Here we are walking in the forest.
You should see the place we are living in!
The cottage were we live is in the outskirts of a little village in the area called Nuuksio, which is a huge national park.
The nearest shops are twelve kilometers away, and there is only one bus driwing to and from the village, and still we are only about 30 kilometers away from the capitol city, Helsinki.
The village is surrounded by forests and lakes, bogs and pools, and the forest starts about five steps from our cottage, so the yard is full of forest life too. Squirrels and hares, thousands of birds, deers and foxes and elks are regular visitors too.
Lots of different insects too..
The forest is just now full of blooming, wonderfully scenting flowers and trees.
Here I´m admiring kingcups in the shore of a small stream running trough the forest.
This is a smallish lake inside the forest.
The water is still a bit cold, but maybe later we could go to swim in it.
I don´t know why, but for some reason the water always makes me feel like singing!
I was singing "singing in the bathtub" and Rendolph started to sing "I am sailing" and Veronica was singing some hideous sounding finnish song "Kallavesj, Kallavesj".
Maybe it was because we were all singing at the same time that all the fish escaped to the other shore..
We joined Henna who had also escaped on the shore of a brook running to the lake, and started to play a game, where we had to hop from stone to stone in the brook!
I was very good in the hopping! Much better than rendolph! But Veronica was trying to cheat and fly!
The game was very fun! We almost fell to the stream many times!
Then we went on trough the forest..
This is one of the wonderfully smelling bird cherries the forest is full now.
These are wood sorrels. We were eating lots and lots o them! They are very tasty! Only they have oxalic acid, same as rhubarbs, so after eating them it is important to have some milk product.
We walked out of the forest, to see the small school of Nuuksio.
Isn´t it rather friendly looking place? I´m sure the students are happier than in big schools.
Then we were swinging a bit in their swings, and then we went back home to pick some more rhubarb.
They are rather heavy, the rhubarbs!
We took the big leaves off..
And then we had to come up with something to do with them! They made great little tents!
Now I´m going to sleep! Good night, mom!
See you soon again!
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Posted May 21, 2011, 9:58 pm Last edited May 21, 2011, 10:08 pm by Eohippus
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Nuuksio, Finland - 24th May 2011
By: Eohippus
Hello, mom!
I want to introduce to you the two cats with whom we are sharing this little cottage.
I was a bit nervous in the beginning in their company, but not anymore.. they are both so old, that even if they had some hungry thoughts concerning little birds, they are not able to any real act anymore.
The one on the left is Tilpehööri, who is 18 years old, and on the right is her mother, Iuku, 19 years old.
I have heard that when Iuku was yonger she was a widely celebrated hunter, keeping also all the neighborhood cats far away from the surroundings of the cottage.
Now, in her older days, she is behaving in a more civilazed way, discussing with us toys in a peaceful way, although sometimes when our discussions are lead into subjects such us mice under the floor or bird nests in the nearby birch she starts to drool, and that is a bit unnerving, old or not..
I have also some more pics of the forest. We have been walking there a lot.
Always interested in insects I was observing this big anthill. How busy the ants were!
The world belongs to them, actually.. just investigate the forest - there are those big hills, their cities, and highways connecting them to each other, narrower roads leading to smaller hills, villages, and so on..
Finnish people have a competition kept every summer, where the contestants are sitting on a big anthill wearing only panties and who sits there the longest time is the winner.
In july the forest will be full of blueberries!
They are everywhere but now they are still unripe, quite pinkish in color.
It is not yet full summer here, the last snow only melted away about a month ago, and everything is still new and young and growing.
The ferns are still rolling their leaves open.
This is an old village road, not much used anymore.
Henna told there was a rather famous ghost house here, investigated by mediums in the 1950´s.
It was demolished some years ago.
There is some "traffic signs" in middle of the forest, put for the skiers.
There is some bears living in this forest too, we were searching any signs of them, but didn´t find any.
In the best berry time their foot prints can sometimes be seen in the best berry spots. They love berries too!
It is so peacefull and silent in the forest!
We only need to walk about two kilometers into the forest when all the sounds caused by human presence are ceased, and all we hear is birdsong, the wind in the treetops, the insects buzzing and the singing of little brooks that run here and there now in springtime.
So we spent hours just walking and wondering about everything, sometimes deep in a lively discussion about all small and big things in life, sometimes singing and sometimes just consentrating to experience the nature.
I love these free, wild forests, mom!
I would stay here all the time, but Rendolph wants to see some city life too.
So I guess we are going to Helsinki tomorrow to see something of it! I´ll write to you soon again!
Love, Zoe.
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Posted May 24, 2011, 11:06 pm
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Helsinki, Finland - 30th May 2011
By: Eohippus
Hello again, mom!
Greetings from Finland! It is cool here - in every sense!
We have been seeing many interesting things - and quite too many cats and mosquitoes!
Here I´m going to show some pics I have been asking Henna to take of our acivities here.
One day we went to visit a friend of Hennas to Helsinki.
First we took a bus from Nuuksio to Leppävaara, and then a train to Helsinki. The distance is about 30 kilometers - not too bad! I mean, it is fantastic to live in a little cottage in middle of forest so near the capitol city, isn´t it?
First we went to Hennas friends place, and to get there we took another train and another bus.
At last we reached our destination, walking over this beautiful old bridge leading over river Vantaa.
First we met the dog, who was waiting for us at the door.
He was a very well-behaving dog, a finnish breed, originally meant for herding reindeers in the fjells. Rendolph was a bit irritates by this and said he doesn´t want to be herded!
Then we met the cat and gosh he was cunning! He was saying he would never even consider having a bird dish, but saying that he was winking for the dog, and I didn´t trust him a bit!
So we went to the nearby field rather than spent time with the cat, and guess what we went to do!?
Just watch!
Oh yes! We were shooting with an airgun!
Here you can see how well I was shooting, hmm? All the bullets hit rater near the centrum! Not bad for a first timer!
Then we took a train to the Helsinki centrum. This is the main railway station. It was rather famous and admired in the 1920´s when it was built. It reminded me of the radios of that time..
We took a tram to a beautiful park called Kaivopuisto.
In the park everyhing was in their most glorious spring bloom and we were wondering and admiring the different flowers and trees.
There was also many wild geese, who flew to Finland every spring. I was chatting a bit with them about our travels and the parts of the world we have been seeing.
There was also this statue which I found somehow surreal in the surroundings!
These hearts I found for you, mom!
The staircase led us on top of a hill in middle of the park..
There we saw this old observatory.
Henna told she has been there sometime watching sunspots trough the telescope. I believe she was actually trying to spot some ufos.. she is a bit odd.. too much X-files..
There was a great view over the Baltic Sea from top of the hill!
We decided to go down to the sea shore, to smell the wonderful sea air, and maybe to meet some fish!
On our way we saw this wishing well. Well, it is of course not a well.. it is a natural spring.
There was still more flowers!
And lots of those overwhelmingly smelling bird cherries.
Then we came to the seashore!
We are both, me and Rendolph, convinced that we are natural born seamen! Well, sea creatures! Sounds a bit odd when one is a reindeer and the other is a kiwi, but how else can it be explained, the irresistible need to sing sea shanties whenever we see water!
Soon we were singing again, and Henna said she will never take us near any water, but she was grinning anyway.
This is one place where ferries leave for nearby small islands. I think we will take one soon!
Woooooops! I didn´t know finnish frogs grow this big! No going near any pools during the mating season!
We walked onwards and came to a square where we saw this odd statue - some kind of sealions spitting water over a girl in middle?
Then we saw a church, main lutheran cathedral. Henna said it is very near to her uni faculty, but we didn´t go there because it was sunday.
This is what we saw watching down in front of the cathedral.
We peeped into a café!
I was sitting a bit on the knee of the most famous finnish childrens story writer, Topelius.
And then we met some moomins in a souvenier shop window! Nice creatures! Henna has many books about their adventures.
This is Esplanade, a popular hangout place in summertime for young finns
This is my last pic from Helsinki this time.
Does anyone else see anything odd in three blacksmith blacksmithing naked together?
I´ll write again soon, mom!
Kisses from Zoe!
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Posted May 30, 2011, 9:38 pm
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Linnanmäki, Helsinki, Finland - 6th June 2011
By: Eohippus
Hei taas ( =Hello again), dear mom!
We have been having lots of fun!
Yesterday we took part in a demonstration in front of the finnish parliament house!
I think the other demonstrators were there against building more nuclear power, but we had our own agenda.
Henna was pretending she doesn´t know us.
After the demonstration we walked a bit. Here we are in front of the finnish national museum.
I noticed there was an exhibition going on about life in the Baltic sea, and I wanted to peep in.
Henna said that´s ok, but that Veronica and Rendolph should instead go with her, because it is a MUSEUM where one has to behave and be silent and if the three of us went there together..
Rendolph and Veronica were mumbling something about discrimination, but I saw a twinkle in their eyes, and I think they started to tow Henna determinedly towards and icecream booth.
I went in and first I saw lots of photographs about differents plants and algae.
Watching the world from the viewpoint of a fish!
I seems that Baltic sea is quite exceptional.. half lake, half sea, because during the ice age it was a huge lake, and there is only the very narrow strait of Denmark trough which the salty water can now pour in from the Atlantic ocean.. so there is both sea- and lake creatures living in there!
Eeeep!
I hope the finnish shrimps are not quite this big in reality!
Scares my appetite away!
There was a whole room presenting the different species of fish, and my mouth started to water..
In the next room were aquariums and real fish!
I was watching them and watching them and started to feel more and more hungry!
When I reached the last aquarium I was pining for food, and my poor little stomach was grumbling when I went out from the museum!
So I was very happy to see Veronica and Rendolph waiting for me outside the museum with a huge bar of white choc!
It took us about three minutes to make the bar disappear!
Rendolph and Veronica told me we had a job to do!
They had been asking from Henna some coins to buy even more sweets, and Henna had told them they have to earn the money!
Rendolph had suggested they could rob a bank instead, but at last they had agreed about washing some carpets for some money, and so we went to wash carpets!
Here we have the carpets, brushes and pine soap.
Carpet washing is a starting of the summer ritual for finns.
There are carpet washing places here and there, where one can wash the carpets using running water, and scaffolds to hang them to dry in the sun.
It was a hard work, but also fun!
Although Rendolph and Veronica and a hose is not a very peacefull composition! We were soon in middle of an awful water fight!
Anyway, Henna was happy with the carpets and she gave us some coins. We were discussing what to do with them.
Veronica said we could buy sweets and soda, and I was suggesting we could buy some smoked herrings, but Rendolph said the coins are our capital and we should make an investment! We asked what he means, and he said "Follow me!" and marched into a gambling den!
We were watching around us..
There was huge collection of different games, working mainly with 2 euros a round.
We choose "Revenge from Mars"
And "Harley&Davidson driwers"
We were doing amazingly well and winning a whole pile of coins!
People were starting to gather around us and the keeper of the gambling den was starting to look suspicious, so we decided we had got enough and went to Linnanmäki amusement park to use it all!
Linnanmäki is the oldest amusement park in Finland, and all its profit goes to children wellfare organisations.
Inside the gates, we exchanged our pile of coins for a pile of tickets and then we run from ride to ride!
Saturday was the last day of school before summer holidays for finnish kids, and there was lots of them in the amusement park celebrating the longed for freedom.
After about two hours Veronica started to look slightly green and we were all troughoutly vet, but we just couldn´t stop until we had tried every ride in the park, except the monorail train, which was quite too slow for our tastes!
When we left home we felt a bit exhausted, but ah so satisfied too!
We sat for a while in a park before going home, to calm down. And when we get there and Henna asked what had we done with the money we earned with the carpet washing we answered with some shuffling of feet that we had bought sweets.
A warm embrace from your little Zoe, who is having lots of fun!
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Posted Jun 6, 2011, 8:32 pm Last edited Jun 6, 2011, 8:49 pm by Eohippus
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Porkkala, Kirkkonummi, Finland - 15th June 2011
By: Eohippus
Hello, dear mom!
You cannot imagine how much we have been cleaning and putting things into order these last few days!
Hennas beloved one is coming to visit from Portugal, you see.
Haha, that´s a good way to get Henna to buy us icecreams and other necessities, to ask her if she wants us to describe exactly HOW much we have been cleaning to her lover.
We have had lots of icecreams lately!
Yesterday we had a holiday from the cleaning and made a trip to Porkkala to cook coffee on open fire, and see a cute local museum.
Here we are driwing trough finnish countryside. Isn´t it beautiful?
Oh yes, this time we didn´t take the car.. we let Henna driwe.
Just now every place is full of blooming lupines (Lupinus polyphyllus). They are really beautiful, but of course they are invading space from original species. They were brought to Europe from North America, and they really "exploded" everywhere in hundred years.
We stopped first to see the little museum, showing common way of living in finnish farmyards, still so little while ago.. now almost disappeared.
This little bridge lead us to the museum area, but first we had to go to explore the shore of the little spring a bit.
First we saw some sheep in the museum yard. They were mainly eating hay or lazily laying in the shade.
We were watching around us in the yard. It looked really nice! I would have nothing against living in this kind of surroundings! Maybe I´ll start farming when I have first seen enough world.
You could help me by buying me a sheep, mom. Wouldn´t that be nice?
I can see us, sitting in the sofa in the evenings, watching TV.. but maybe there would be a fight over the remote with the sheep!
Then we went to see the insides of the main building.
Of course this was a big house. There was also lots of people living in very humble little cottages, very much like Hennas..
Then we went to see the side buildings - the sauna and the stables and the storage rooms.
Here we are in a building which was used to make cheese and butter.
Here is a collection of old wooden skis. Henna says she had a pair much like these when she was a kid.
Just imagine a country like this in vinter time, when there still wasn´t any roads or connections, the only means of getting from one place to another was skiing trough the forests.
This is a village swing, where all the young people were gathering to have fun in summer evenings. There could be even 20 people swinging at the same time! And they were singing special swinging songs.
In earlier times swinging had a religious meaning. It was symbolizing the boat with which the sun is sailing over the seas, and the oldest swinging songs tell about the travels of the sun.
So swinging was originally a ritual done especially on midsummer, when the day is longest and the power of the sun greatest.
This has to do with the old pagan religion too, but its meaning has been changing trough times.. what is known about it is that it has been used in rituals in which the life situation is changing, like getting married. It is like initiation to the new sircumstances to walk trough it.
This an old sleigh with which people were driwing to church.
We found a cottage suitable just for us!
[When we had seen about all there was to be seen we continued our journey.
These hens are of an old finnish breed. They were talking a funny dialect, too! [/size][/color]
We drowe to Porkkala and there we lit a fire, feeling a bit peckish. It is odd how museums make you feel hungry!
Here we are dragging more wood to the fire.
Then were having coffee and cookies!
Then we went to see around us. It was a nice, fresh pine area.
The we found some deer poop. What toilet manners! Me and Veronica, we were teasing Rendolph a bit.. after all, deers are his relations!
We went to see the view over the Baltic ocean.
Then we tried how cold the water was - if it would be warm enough to swim, but it wasn´t. I was only wetting my feet and Rendolph his toe tips, but Veronica refused even from trying. Bats!
Could you guess what time it is in this pic, mom? It is about 23.00! This time of the year the sun sets only for couple of hours here!
That has caused some discussions about the time of going to bed!
We walked over a buttercup sea and blowed them high up towards the sky as we walked back to the car.
See you soon again, mom!
Henna says we are going to make some trips when her partner is here, to see more of Finland.
Kisses!
Zoe
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Posted Jun 15, 2011, 8:44 pm Last edited Jun 15, 2011, 10:22 pm by Eohippus
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Mikkeli, Finland - 9th July 2011
By: Eohippus
Hello, mom!
It has been a longish time since I last time was here, and lots of things have happened!
I have been on a long and exiting trip trough Finland and even seen the shore of the Arctic Ocean!
We started our trip (me, Rendolph, Veronica, Orkku Orava, Henna and her partner and Torsten, who is a toyvoyager who joined us a day before we started our trip - so we get to know him in a very adventurous manner.
This is pic is from Kristiina in eastern Finland where we started our trip and where we spent our first night in Hennas friends summer cottage.
Here we are already happily in the cottage, but gosh it was hard to get there!
Hennas friend had drawn a map how to get there, but it seems he had forgot the existence of some crossroads and streets and towns..
Henna started to sound a bit furious talking with him on phone, but the best part came after we had already reached the cottage..
"Did I mention to you that the main building is haunted?" asked Hennas friend on phone.
"Huh? Haunted? How?"
"Well.. there has been investigators of supernatural phenomenon with their measuring equipments and all and it seems there is items moving by themselves, odd lights and noises at nights, but since you are sleeping in the little cottage, not in the main building, I think it doesn´t matter much!" said him.
This is pic of the haunted building. We only went to peep in trough the windows on daytime..
but at night we could not resist, we simply HAD to scare Henna and her partner a bit.. Well.. they were announcing that they don´t believe in ghosts and couldn´t care less..
We found a white pillowcase.. Veronica, who can fly, put it over herself.. and that was quite enough!!! No need to tell more details, I guess.
This is the small non-haunted cottage (exept us) and the vehicle in the pic was our means of transport and also our accommodation troughout the trip. At evenings Henna just put two mattrasses on the back space and with sleeping sacks and blankets the car was turned into a very satisfying little bedroom!
Our trip took us towards north, and we stopped every now and then to see interesting things we encountered. This old engine we stopped to admire in Pieksämäki.
This view is taken in a town called Kuopio, on a hill where they also have skijumping towers.
Here we are in the Kuopio harbour, watching old steam boats.
The next night we spent sleeping in the car in a shore of a beautiful lake called Seitenjärvi.
It was our first night in the car and everyone was a bit exited, but it went very well, although Torsten and Rendolph started a huge pillowfight in middle of the night.
In the morning we toyvoyagers woke up much before Henna and her partner and went to investigate the beautiful shore..
Our journey continued, and in Hyrynsalmi we stopped to see this helicopter. We wondered if it could really be one used by Santa Claus, but Rendolph was 100 % sure Santa only flies with help of his flying reindeer cousins.
This cloudberry we photographed in Ranua, which is some kind of cloudberry picking- and selling center later in july-august.
In the evening we already reached the area considered to be southern Lappland. We stopped to watch this rapid called Auttikoski.
Now I have to let the other toys to make their updates too, I just won the first turn to write in an eating competition..
I´ll go on with my story tomorrow!
Kisses! Zoe
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Posted Jul 9, 2011, 7:39 pm Last edited Jul 9, 2011, 11:29 pm by Eohippus
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