Picturephoning our roundtrip

It's christmas time in Southeastern Finland again. It's been a long time since we just got into a car and went, just out for driving without a clear destination. We did that a lot more in France and Germany in the 90's. Sometimes we made long drives alla over Switzerland without minding where we ended up at last. Weekends were fun cruising from place to place without a schedule or preset goal, find a small hotel and a cozy restaurant and to spend the time away from work and other every day obligations.

It started as a simple, local trip with IK and the boys to do some holiday shopping at this great little store selling Desing and Craft Collections. It turned into an 500 km's round trip that meandered through several small Southern towns (and their christmas holiday parades!) and finally over to Itäkeskus for a late, late lunch - and ended up as a next day venture into Kymenlaakso to find more freewheeling shopping experiences.

There's nothing like that freedom of having nowhere to go, no destination in mind, no commitments or time constraints. There just aren't enough spontaneous roadtrips as we used to do before. Guess who got the picturephone?



During my years in North America...One of the privileges of living in New York, Montreal, Atlanta, Vancouver, San Fransisco, Toronto or some other big city is finding oneself surrounded by a variety of different restaurants. Forget the big, franchized chain eating establishments. The amount of different dining experiences are far too much to list. It should be noted, however, that there are so many different little restaurants and watering holes hidden in these great cities. I simply can't remember them all.