Zakynthos - vacation part 5

We had really expected Zakynthos to be the coolest of the 4 islands, but we were so wrong. Zakynthos was so filled with package tourists! I had never heard of anyone from my home country go to Zakynthos but I was so wrong. They were all there. As all slavic neighbors and Germans and Englishmen.

The island itself has a great nature, with really steep mountains- the irritating part is that there is no roads taking you there. So the mountainous part is completely desert but beautiful.

Zakynthos also has a great amount of caves, also a few ones that colors your skin blue!

The beach, Shipwreck Bay, that I blogged about before the trip was amazing to watch from high above!

I had imagined it to be extremely cool and even the highlight of our trip! But it was only reachable by boats and boats there were- hundreds and hundreds of tourists. The picture I have here I took in the early morning and already then there were boats bringing eager people to the beach.

When we looked closely we could notice that nobody was swimming due to the high waves and that the sea was actually extremely dirty:

So we didn't go there. Instead we found a beach called Xigia with a natural source of sulphur collagen! So great for the psoriasis skin! Yes, it smelled like rotten eggs but we got used to it quite fast...

The higligt of our stay at Zakynthos was an evening out with our Finish friends Susa & Petu and to see the nests of the Loggerhead sea turtles...

Good thing eaten here: Ionian chicken. A grilled chicken fillet with lemon sauce, oven baked apples and dry dill. Sounds like a terrible combination but I promise you it was divine!

Ithaca - vacation part 4

We made also a trip over the day to the island Ithaca- which many knows from the mythological story of Odysseus.

Of the whole experience the most particular thing was the enormous ship driving into the tiny harbor and extremely precisely maneuvering it on centimeters to get people safe on board- but even more precisely counting which bus or truck should go out and how many cars in to keep the height balance of the ship so the next truck would also be able to drive out.... And all of this in just a few minutes! Very impressing.

Nevertheless- Ithaca was much more wild and rough than Kefalonia. Very steep and rough rocks, goats everywhere and I really mean everywhere and a lot of nature and almost no houses. Most of the people live in Vathi- the capital of Ithaca and there we could also see many celebrities' yachts.

The rough nature was really beautiful with fruits and vegetables growing in the wild and we also saw olive trees that are said to be over 1500 years old..!

As you can imagine, religion seemed to be very important on a place like this, and therefore we could also notice that the orthodox churches were different from the ones in Kefalonia or Corfu. On Ithaca they were much more colorful and much more in the centre of attention.

Here still the view over Vathi:

Delicious food eaten here: aubergine filled with minced meat and bechamel.

Kefalonia- vacation part 3

Of all Greek islands I've visited Kefalonia is the best one. If I compare it to other known island close to it I would say Corsica is more amazing but Kefalonia wins Sicily for sure.

If you have ever seen the movie Captain Corelli's Mandolin you know how it looks on Kefalonia- as it is filmed exactly there where we were.

We could not really find much tourists or touristic things on Kefalonia. The tourists that were there were Italians or Greeks that came by own sailing boat or yacht to relax before sailing further.

So the village we lived in looked like this:

Very calm, a few really nice family restaurants, a bakery where we ate breakfast every morning, a church and that's about it.

The whole island is very rocky with green fields and turquoise waters. The highest top is at 1628 meters, which is extremely high for an island so small!

So by the steep cliffs there was always a nice beach to find- like Myrtos, which is also pictured in Captain Corelli's Mandolin several times:

And because of the high peek in the middle of the sea there were clouds that tried their best to climb over to the other side- which meant we were every now and then in the middle of a cloud or above it while driving. A bit the same feeling as when fog creeps up on you at sea.

Talking about fog and clouds- to watch Ithaca in the morning sun and humidity was marvelous:

We drove every morning to a beach, went to a new village for lunch and to explore it at the hottest time of the day- staying in shadows, and explored another beach in the afternoon and evening. My favorite beach of all of them was this Emblissi in the north:

Soft pebble stones, allmost no people at all, lovely waters to swim in. Another nice one was Zola:

Good food we tasted here was: Saganaki. A cheese baken in the oven. This delicious Saganaki we tasted had also honey and sesame seeds and moussaka of course.

Corfu- vacation part 2

We decided to make a trip on a few Greek islands in the Ionian sea this summer and Corfu was the first of them. We had expected the island to be filled with English package tourists so we had more or less the intention to just get as much sun as possible, try to ignore the tourist-bullshit and travel as fast as possible to the next island. (After a month of searching the only option for our trip was to start in Corfu).

But to our (positive) surprise Corfu was actually really nice! We rented a car and skipped all marked beaches from the tourist map and drove around the island to places that seemed to have a nice nature. In the end we found beaches where we were the only ones, restaurants with only Greek people and amazing views of the Adriatic sea.

The best place was Paleokastritsa, a mountainous bay with beaches only reachable by boat:

In that area we also saw the best sunsets over the Adriatic sea:

Besides tourism, olives are the most important livelihood and that could be seen everywhere on the island. The olive trees were old and well taken care of.

The nature is very green with all the olive trees and cypresses. A weird combination as well.

The sandy beaches were filled with package tourists and most of the pebble beaches were empty, which was perfect for us who prefer pebbles over sand...!

Corfu is located very close to the Albanian coast, you can see it as a big, dry shadow in the horizon on the east coast or up from the Mont Pantokrator mountain.

Corfu has a long history with the English and the Italians and of this the Venetian style architecture remains. Corfu's capital is imaginatively called Corfu and reminds of some southern Italian city with a twist of the Northern architecture.

We tasted 2 very good things on Corfu. Recipe number 1: grilled Halloumi with fresh lemon, parsley and olive oil on top. Recipe number 2: a "sauce" made of grilled aubergine, a lot of garlic and olive oil (all mixed together with a mixer).

Grigna- vacation part 1

I really wanted to go hiking as I have missed the mountains so much so it seemed like the perfect escape for today when Milan was under a heat wave. We went to Grigna which is a great mountain because it looks like a saw! So cool!

But it was not just hiking, it was actually quite hard! We had to climb every now and then...

 The mountain is so incredibly beautiful and there is so many rock formations to stare at!

We saw some falcons and a Alpine deers...

Then we stopped for lunch. Not a bad lunch view. I kind of felt like- ok, now I'm in vacation. No Stockholm city dust.

A really nice place.

Gone on Vacation

I start my 1 month vacation today. During this time I will among others go hiking in surroundings like this:

I will swim on this beach:

And I will use my (natural) guttural "R" in this city:

Do you recognize the places?

I am packing at this very moment and I am fighting with myself whether to take my big Nikon camera or not. I will first pack all of my shoes. Then let's see if there is space :)

Tarina puukengistä

Kun olin pieni hämmästelin aina Porvoolaisten serkkujeni puukenkiä. Koko perheellä oli sellaiset mustat, nahkaiset, jopa lapsilla! Niissä käveltiin pihalla, mentiin kauppaan ja jopa kesäjuhliin!

Aika juntteja, ajattelin silloin salaa.

Vähän vanhempana sain usein seurata isäni mukaan hänen työpaikalleen ja isälläni oli puukengät sisäkenkinä toimistossa. Niihin liittyy vähemmän juntteja muistoja koska oli aina vähän spesiaalia saada olla isän kanssa kahdestaan isossa toimistossa pääkaupungissa ja ennenkaikkea sai mennä osaston sihteerin keksivarastoon ryöstöretkelle. Siellä oli aina dominoja, jaffakeksejä ja fasupaloja!

Näitä kaikkia puukenkien käyttäjiä yhdisti se, että sanoivat niiden olevan erittäin mukavat jalassa.

Viime kesänä huomasin monella Tukholmalaisnaisella olevan puukengät. Tosin ei niitä juntteja vaan kaikenlaisia! Värikkäitä ja erilaisilla koroilla! Niitä löytyy perinteisen puukenkätekijän Mohedan sivuilta mutta myös trendikkäimiltä merkeiltä kuten Sweeksiltä ja Hasbeensilta.

Niitä myydään NK:lla samalla hyllyllä Michael Korsin ja Jimmy Choon kenkien kanssa! Niitä löytyy niin Sarah Jessica Parkerin (ja tässä, ja tässä ja tässä) koivista kuin Rachel Bilsonin jaloista.

Ostin tänään haalean oranssiset Sweeksit mallissa "Basewood and Chic". Ne sopii vaan niin mainiosti kaikkien kesämekkojeni kanssa- joten niistä tulee kohta alkavan kesälomani ykköskengät :) Sekä sukulaisperheeni että isäni olivat oikeassa: ne on muuten ihan mielettömän mukavat jaloissa! 

På takvandring

Mamma gav till Fra som julgåva en möjlighet att gå på takvandring i Stockholm. Just efter julen kändes det lite snöigt och kyligt så vi bestämde oss att vänta på våren. Under våren var vi sällan samtidigt i Stockholm då vi hela tiden reste runt så äntligen igår fick vi uppleva det vi länge väntat på!

Vi träffade våra guider på Riddarholmen och gick uppför trapporna på Kammarrättenshus (brevid Riddarholmskyrkan) och fick hjälmar och utrustning på oss. Sedan var det bara att klättra upp på taket och fästa sig i en skena!

Utsikten var jätte fin! Man såg en massa fina takterasser i Gamla Stan... man kunde också se från vilket årtal de olika stadsdelarna i hela Stockholm ursprungligen är på grund av byggstilen.

 

Vi gick i en grupp på 10 och guiden berättade historia om hur Stockholm uppstod och utvecklades. Det mest intressanta var hur de olika husen i Gamla Stan byggdes eller hur folk lockades ut till Södermalm.

En jätterolig upplevelse! Tack mamma!