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Ok eating out is very expensive, but there is cheaper food at the market square as well as the old market, where a piece of cooked salmon is €5 or a bowl of salmon soup is €6 (yes there’s a lot of salmon!). But the harbour reminds me of Hobart, and the cafes and buildings remind me of Paris, so it’s a pretty good combination! The population of Helsinki itself is less than half a million, but it is the city for two nearby towns as week, Espoo and Vantaa, so it’s actually bigger than a city of half a million. Combined with these two other villages the population is about a million. The city has bike lanes, footpaths, buses, trains, trams and an underground metro train system, so the infrastructure is well developed. Also, there are loads of small sized caches! That’s right folks, they’ve got plenty of room for TBs here :) In all I found 9 caches on my trip here, including an awesome earthcache which was of fossils embedded into floor tiles, excellent.

Last night I ate an early dinner at Havis on their terrace. My colleague in the Helsinki office recommended this restaurant for the fish. I had scallops with cauliflower purée and Parma ham followed by strawberries, vanilla ice cream and cinnamon cake.

Tonight I am back at the same Finnish restaurant my workmates took me to at lunch. At lunchtime I had the reindeer and mashed tatties, this evening I will try the lohikeitto, the creamy salmon soup I’ve been wanting to try since I read about it on wikipedia.

Breakfast was picked herrings, smoked mackerel, eggs and yummy dark grainy rye bread. Oh and it’s not all about food! The homeware brands they have here rock! Iittala, Arabia, Marimekko, and Aarrika. Marimekko is probably my fav, they have fabric designs to buy by the metre as well. And the cartoon characters Moomin are really cute and funny. Ok so I’m a little bit in love with this city and Finnish design!

Oh yeah that soup was tasty! And the bread they give is divine! If bread can be divine. They had the wine recommendations on the menu too so I had to take their advice. That leads me to now, when I’m sipping the Austrian  white that I can’t remember the name of, while I wait for my dessert (soft meringue with rhubarb cider sorbet) and the Finnish berry wine. Glass of, mind you ;)

The menu’s wine recommendations were tops last night as well. The Asti they recommended with my strawberries, ice-cream and cinnamon bread was worth taking a photo of the label! Wes and I cycled through that region last year on our Italian push bike holiday, so I had to try it :)

Needless to say, my work daily food allowance is not even enough to cover my two evening meals, but it’s been worth it. Like a mini holiday/work sandwich at almost no cost to me. Except for the presents I had to buy Wes – I only wish he was here too.

I just remembered another reason why I think I was meant to be Finnish. The government have implemented a recycling incentive scheme. Every time you buy a product which is sold in a recyclable packaging, you pay extra for it (20c for small plastic bottle, 15c for can, 10c for glass bottle, 40c for large plastic bottles). Let’s call that the packaging supplement. For example I bought a 500ml plastic bottle of water from the supermarket that costs €1.29, but i had to pay €1.49 for it. Then if you take the empty container back to the supermarket and insert it into a machine, it spits out a voucher of exactly the same amount as you paid for the supplement that you can use on your next purchase. Unfortunately the hotel cleaners nicked my empty bottle before I understood the concept so I’ll never get back my 20c! Take that britain, land of landfill gobblers (out of 16 flats, we are the only ones who recycle). Now it’s time for dessert.

Ok the Finnish berry wine was a mistake, not sweet enough. I should’ve stuck with the recommendation, which coincidentally was the same Asti I loved from last night’s restaurant. The soft meringue was lovely, the rhubarb sorbet and diced fresh strawberries good company for it, but the rhubarb and cider soup was unnecessary, having the texture of babyfood. Ew. Don’t worry I still ate most of it.

Back at the hotel now (which also has recycling bins in the rooms – go Scandic!), and I’m ready for bed. Only two downsides for me so far: most cache locations smell like pee; and at the end of the day my face is covered in London-style soot particles. Two small offsets for all those positives don’t you think! That and apparently some Russian bears have migrated into mid-Finland.

Holy crap a double espresso with a bit of warm milk costs €3.20!! I should’ve just popped into the office where they have an espresso machine. Goodness gracious me. I remember drinking single espresso in Portugal for 70c.

Another good thing is the language isn’t nearly as difficult to pronounce as it looks. Words are really long, but pretty much pronounced phonetically, give or take a few sounds my mouth just will not make.

Described as an ‘undemanding journey’ in the book, we chose this hike because our friend Gordon said he was out of practice with walking. The reality of the instruction ‘ascend 400m up heathery slopes’ didn’t dawn on us until we were in it. Admittedly, it was more annoying than demanding, as the heather bushes came up over my knees, which did make the going kinda tough. Also, we thought the snow would’ve melted on the hills by now, but it hasn’t (will be even worse now due to this week’s snowy gale force windy sleety chaos). Wildlife count for the day included rabbits, sheep, cows, toads making love, frogspawn (toadspawn?), buzzards, oystercatchers, lapwings doing a funky sky dance complete with calls, an adder, a few roe deer, mountain hare in its winter coat, male and female grouse, two black grouse.

Of course we had to nab at least one cache on our way out to the hike, so we nabbed the micro at Feugh Falls, and we had a DNF for a funky letterbox hybrid next to an ostrich farm. We had a lovely early dinner at the Potarch on our way home, and then it was time for bed!

Even though it’s gone back to grey and chilly now, we had a burst of spring weather last week. Wes and I had a wee run around the park last weekend, and the crocuses are keen for spring to arrive as well.

We thought it was about time we took Missy the mini out of her winter hibernation. It’s been three weeks since the last snowfall, and tiny buds are just starting to appear on the stick trees. After two jumpstarts (thanks random kind man near the servo!), we were off! We headed west on the south Deeside b roads that Missy likes so much. Unfortunately this was a particularly harsh winter, the snow left the roads with more than a few potholes, so it was dodgems most of the way. We decided not to risk an engine switch off at Glen Tanar to nab a cache there, and kept on westward instead. We had a quick stop (engine running) to check out the art at this quaint gallery with an old petrol bowser and red telephone box. The lady gave us a handy lesson to fine tune our Scottish pronunciation. We already knew Garioch is geerie and Strachan is strawn, but now we also know Finzean is pronounced fingan with a soft g and Feughside is feeookside!

Then it was time to hit the road again to the Finzean Farm Shop and Teahouse for afternoon tea snacks before a quick roadside TB drop cache then home again. Now we are settled onto the couch with our red wine, gorgonzola and Finzean venison chorizo. Yum! Fingers crossed Missy’s battery is charged enough for another spin tomorrow!

A year ago Wes promised he’d give me a foot rub whenever I want – and he does!

Saturday 6 March 2010 marked the one year anniversary of our wedding day. We had an amazing time relaxing at Turnberry for 3 nights. It was romantic and lovely, but of course it was also a time to remember how much fun we had this time last year with our friends and family in Oz. Presents for the first year are traditionally made of paper, so I gave Wes an ordinance survey map of Girvan and surrounding areas, as well as a 1946 photo postcard of the Turnberry lighthouse, complete with loving message and stamp from its original owner. Wes gave me a (mostly empty) book, the best part was the first page. It’s a wedding anniversary memories book, and so of course only the first year’s page has been filled in! To quote Wes in the book, here are some of our memories from our first year as man and wife:

‘Carving up the white stuff at Cairngorm and Glenshee; cycling and eating our way through the Italian Dolomites; bagging munros Lochnagar and Buachaille Etive Mor; yummy hot chocolate at Cafe Chocolat in Schiphol Airport; the coldest campout and world class waves in Thurso; warm sun, fine arts, macaroons and pleasant traffic police in Paris; Aberdeen Christmas with Gerrod and Kristy – two trees, vodka shots, turkey and mountain adventures; hiking fells, The Red Arrows and Herdwick sheep in the Lakes District.’