The PicuMarZ Diary

August is the hottest month of the year in Malta, so for a cold-blooded Finn like me, it is better to stay away from Malta during this month Therefore Stephen and I decided that this is a good time to go and visit my parents in Finland for almost three weeks.

Last time we went to Finland we had to wait several hours at Arlanda airport in Sweden for our connecting flight to Vaasa (there are no direct flights unfortunately) and we spent those hours in the city Uppsala. We really liked it there and felt that we wanted to see more of the city, so this time we planned for a stop at Uppsala again. We arrived to Arlanda around noon, and the plane to Vaasa left as late as 11 pm.

Uppsala is situated about 70 kilometers north of the capital Stockholm, and it took us about 40 minutes with the bus. First we walked around for a while in the centre, visiting some shops, but I was feeling quite hungry already, so we started to search for the Greek restaurant Santorini, which one of my Swedish friends had recommended. We got a table with a nice view of the nearby river Fyrisan, and the service was extremely fast, we got the starter almost immediately. The food was really good, but it was a bit expensive.

During the meal we noted that there was a large park on the opposite side of the river, and since we felt full and sleepy it was nice to find a nearby park:-) Stephen took some photos and we filmed a bit in the park before we rested for a short while on two benches. Unfortunately it was cloudy all day, so it was not perfect for photos, but at least it did not rain.

We continued our walk to another park that Stephen had been looking forward to visiting, namely the Botanical Garden. We walked around there for hours, and Stephen who is really an expert on plants by now, found a few mistakes in the information written about different plants. However, we did not find anyone to inform about these mistakes (Stephen had hoped for some kind of reward

Back in the centre we did some shopping and then we felt the need for coffee, since there were still many hours left until we would be in bed at my parents' place. We soon discovered that the price difference for a cup of coffee is huge between Malta and Sweden (at least this part of Sweden). So we got a bit of a problem when we realized that a cup of coffee costs 20 crowns each, not to mention the cakes (10 crowns for a tiny, tiny biscuit and 30 crowns for a piece of cake) and we only had 50 crowns left. Stephen however managed to solve the problem "a la Maltija": we went to a supermarket to pay a whole pack of biscuits for 10 crowns, then we went back to the cafe and bought a cup of coffee each and ate the biscuits from my bag.

After the coffee adventure it was time to take the bus back to the airport, and at 1 am we arrived to the airport in Vaasa, where my father picked us up with the car. After 1 hour with the car we could finally go to bed, exhausted after a long day.

The whole photogallery about this event can be seen by clicking here