Palvajarvi, Finland 2017: Time to take Anna's folks back to Lahti...

Thursday 20 July 2017

Time to take Anna's folks back to Lahti...

On Monday, we made the 200 mile round trip down to Lahti and back to see off Anna's family as they caught their train back to St Petersburg. After the fabulous weather of Sunday, it was raining! And there was quite a bit of thunder on the way down and back. It was around midnight before we got home, so a late evening and a long lie into Tuesday!

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2017 will be the 11th anniversary of our first trip to Finland in 2006, when we first ventured to, and fell in love with this wonderfully beautiful and tranquil Nordic country.

This will be our 11th summer visit to this hidden gem of a country in the far north of Europe.

We fell in love with Finland in 2006 when we stayed at Santalahti Holiday Resort in the southern town of Kotka. We were back in 2008, flying to Helsinki, then staying in both Kotka and Varkaus, around 300 kms north east of the capital city. This gave us our first taste of the lakeland areas inland, and we loved swimming in the beautiful warm lakes!
In 2010 we returned by car from Scotland in a heatwave to the areas close to Juva and Puumala, renting our first cottages by lakes that were incredibly warm to swim in. After such fantastic weather in 2010, we had high hopes of the same in 2011, and incredibly, we were again very lucky to have a real heatwave! We stayed in two cottages close to Juva again, and fell further in love with the tranquil solitude you experience in this spectacular lakeland area.
By 2012, we wanted to try some new areas and cottages, so we planned a 24 day holiday, staying for a week in three different cottages as well as staying in a beautiful Helsinki aparthotel for 3 nights. It was lovely to discover the eastern town of Parikkala, as well as the western town of Ruovesi, and in between, we stayed for a week in what has become our firm favourite cottage of all our trips, close to Jyväskylä. We loved our stay on Lake Palvajarvi so much in 2012, that we returned to the same cottage again in 2013 and 2014 for two weeks, as well as in 2015. In 2016, we were back for our 5th year at what was definitely a real home-from-home! And so now 2017 is our 6th year in a row at this lovely property!

Heating a Smoke Sauna

We've usually spent our time in wood-burning saunas while in Finland, but there is a different type of sauna that requires many hours of preparation, but which provides the "Rolls Royce" of sauna experiences once it's ready! Yes, the Smoke Sauna - and this short film describes the process for heating one! This year, after 10 years of wood-burning and electric saunas, we are going to try a Smoke Sauna for the first time, at the beautiful Taulu Manor which is only a short drive from our cottage.