Today has certainly had its ups and downs. We’ve driven through some amazing scenery, but the enjoyment has been dampened somewhat by Miikka being violently sick all over the south west coast of England… Yes, he’s in a bad way and we’re not quite sure why, as we’ve all eaten pretty much the same things (and both Stu and I are fine – so far…). It’s quite heartbreaking really, to see him feel that bad. We planned this trip for quite some time and I was so looking forward to showing him all these amazing places… We can only hope that he feels better by tomorrow so we can at least have one proper day of full-on tourism.

We did drive through pretty places with beautiful beaches like Teignmouth, Torquay and Torcross (where Layla was just on holiday for a week but they had driven home yesterday, damn!), and one of my all time favourite places, Dartmouth(which involved a rather lengthy queue for the ferry). Finally crossing over from Devon to Cornwall, we did miss out on places like Looe and Polperro as we took a quicker route in order to get the quite grey looking patient into bed. But that’s ok, it’s still great to be back in Cornwall. I can’t believe it’s seven years since we were here last, for my 25th birthday! Crikey time flies. After tucking M into bed and arming him with bottles of water, Stu and I went for a quick drive to St Ives, just to make it a reality that we’re really here. Oh how I wish it was for longer than one day.

Right now all I can hear is synchronised snoring. I think it’s time for me to dive into my book for a while before falling asleep. Here’s hoping tomorrow starts in a more positive manner than today…

Greetings from Exeter! We have a long day of driving behind us, most of which was spent at various traffic jams on the M3, one of which was cause by a car catching fire and burning to a crisp. But we did manage to break through from the worst traffic after The New Forest though and drove through some lovely scenery. There was the hustle and bustle of summery Weymouth, the cliff top view at Abbotsbury, and taking a break so some of us could have a beer – in Beer, the name of which provided hours of entertainment in the car. We got to Exeter sometime before 7pm and went out to eat the biggest portion of fish & chips known to man. Hence all three of us are still feeling quite uncomfortably full.

Since I took my laptop with me I’ll write little updates here and there, but I’ll add pictures to the entries once I get home. I don’t have any appropriate software on the laptop to process my pics, and the screen isn’t really big enough either.

The whether today was mostly lovely and sunny, with little spells of drizzle here and there. It’s raining now but tomorrow it’s supposed to be 28C in Cornwall, which is where we’re heading.

Oh by the way, there’s loads of rabbits outside our motel window, just sitting there! Jenni would be in bunny heaven. :D

It was strange coming back to Finland. At the same time so familiar and normal, but also freaky as the fact that we don’t have a home here any more really hit home and the whole thing became that much more real. I don’t really regret any of the choices I’ve made in life, I’ve always believed that all the things you go through shape you into the person you are, but I can’t deny that I felt a huge sense of loss when driving back from the airport and passing the junction to our old home. I had all these plans for the future and the visions always included living in that flat for some time to come. Letting go of it meant I had to let go of a lot of dreams. I think leaving that flat was ultimately a lot more difficult that leaving Finland ‘for good’.

The weather has been gorgeous so far. We had a barbecue and a belated Vappu celebration on mum’s patio with sima and tippaleipä. Mmmm lovely.

I’m currently sitting in an internet cafe in Rome. We’re just about to head out for something to eat, but I felt like coming in and checking out what’s happening in the world. It’s been very hot here indeed, aircon is a lifesaver! Our hotel is nice enough and we even got a complimentary bottle of champers last night because the travel agent had let the hotel know it was our honeymoon! Oh and we also have a little fish in the bathroom. It seems rather scared of us though and hides in the plant thingy in the middle of the bowl every time we go in.

We’ve been out and about a bit; on foot, on the metro and on the bus. There’s a lot of sweat involved in getting around the city, but it’s worth it. Rome is as beautiful and bonkers as ever and I’m really glad to be back.

Righty ho, off to eat some pasta now. Ciao!

The cruise was very nice indeed. The ferry was done up all christmassy and the weather in Stockholm was sunny (and cold!). Somehow we ended up on ‘Finland’s funniest homevideos gala cruise’, which entailed recording a gala which will air on TV on friday. We didn’t go to that one, mind. We did sit in on a ‘workshop’ where people could bring in their funny home videos. So not funny. :| Umm. But yeah, at least we learned that the presenter bloke is tiny in real life!

This trip was quite a revelation in terms of how much better I’m feeling. I really felt like my old self again and even stayed up late drinking margaritas in the night club and all sorts. Might not sound like much to most people, but I can’t personally remember the last time when I would have been in a bar drinking into the night without feeling absolutely horrible and exhausted. So yay.

I shot a lot of video clips and will edit them together shortly. Tonight maybe.

In other news, I bought three pairs of shoes from Stockholm. :D And I love them all.

And it’s like 4 days till Christmas!

And we’re finally going go see The Devil Wears Prada with Jenni today. We’ve only been planning to see it since she was still in Canada. :P

Great… All UK airports are in chaos and a critical security alert has been issued after a plot to blow up planes in mid-flight from the UK to the US was foiled. According to MI5′s website, critical threat level means ‘an attack is expected imminently and indicates an extremely high level of threat to the UK’. :| Nice one.

Heathrow Airport has been closed to all incoming flights. But still, at the moment BA is saying I should check in on my flight in the morning as normal… Another thing is do I really want to! :o Pfft. I expect some excruciating waiting around at packed airports…

There’s also a nice new hand luggage policy in place:

Passengers may take through the airport security search point, in a single (ideally transparent) plastic carrier bag, only the following items. Nothing may be carried in pockets:

We expect severe congestion in and around all UK airports and possible delays to flights.

I can hardly wait! :|

After an arthritis-inducing amount of time spent scanning and sorting out images, a selection of the holiday pictures is now online here. I even tried to throw in some captions. All the square images are taken with a Holga and scanned from print, in case someone wonders.

Ack, I can’t stand the thought of hols being over tomorrow. Sucks so bad.

Well ok, I can’t go to bed without revealing this much. On Thursday 20 July (at 22:55), Stu proposed to me on San Marco’s Square in Venice. And I said ‘OK’. :D It was all very romantic and the scene around us looked like from a movie (even if we didn’t, in the +38C heat). It did take me completely by surprise, even though I might have had some romantic ideas about being proposed to in Venice, I didn’t have a clue he’d actually do it! I guess nearly 7 years of training on what I’d like finally paid off. :P Just kidding. But it was perfect in every way. More later…

Soo, the cruise to Stockholm was much fun (see, there we are in our cabin). We even managed to miss the riots (which also involved the fellas with funny hair in one of my moblog pics – saw them on telly later :P ) where shop windows were being smashed etc. in oppose to globalisation. I think. Anyhoo.

The weather right now is glorious – all sunshine – and it’s Friday. So that’s all good. For someone who travels as much as I do, I can’t quite understand why it takes me such a long time to regain a sense of control after returning from a trip. It happens every time I go away for work, but it looks like only a couple of days of holiday have the same effect. Last week I felt so on top of things, I had re-arranged the furniture, had a clean home and a tidy kitchen, was staying on top of the laundry, not to mention diet, bills etc. routines. Now, after being back for four days, the flat is in complete chaos, I’m yet to unpack completely, I haven’t even managed to do a proper foodshop and I just feel like I can’t get a grasp of anything. I’m sure the weekend will fix things, but still, it’s bloody annoying. I really ought to be able to just return and slip into normal routines just like that by now.

After a gruelling day at the tax office on Wednesday (why did our tax office have to move into the arse end of the universe) it looks like I might even get a bit of a rebate at the end of the year. That’s absolutely brilliant and a complete 180 to the feeling I left the tax office last year with. Fingers crossed there is no huge mistake in the calculations. In any case, it’s nice to just breathe a sigh of release that that’s done for this year. God I hate tax returns.

I feel like I’m going through an extremely busy period at the moment. And busy in a mundane, not very exciting way. I can’t seem to muster much time or energy to my normal past time activities, like shooting. Mind you, I do have a huge backlog of older shoots to process and a gigantic amount of pictures in need of sorting out for printing for portfolio or to models etc. :| Should probably get to all that at some point. Uhh, I hate feeling useless.

Bring on the weekend (and a little cleaning lady if at all possible).

No-one goes to Hanko or Tammisaari in March. Apart from us that is. :|

God damn it was cold and windy.

Blah, not really in the mood for writing. Had another doctor’s appointment today, have another wisdom tooth pulled out next Friday, blood tests next week… more doctors and dentists when I get back from England. I wouldn’t mind if I never saw another doctor’s or dentist’s surgery again in my life. Pfft.

Anyways, I thought I ought to put a little glimpse of our Stockholm cruise up. The coolest thing was the location of our cabin. It was right at the end of the ferry, which meant we sort of had ‘our own’ balcony and a bloody huge window-wide screen that showed the Olympics. That was actually the sport bar’s screen outside our window, but it was just such a weird and wonderful thing to have, I didn’t even mind it was just sports. Check the pic of me watching ‘our’ widescreen telly. :D See, we’re easily pleased.

Anyways, lots of good food, a bit too much to drink, some tax free shopping and one drunken shopping spree in the perfume/makeup shop made sure we didn’t stick to our budget at all. But ho hum, it was sort of our 5-year anniversary cruise so we decided not to think about money. Well not too much anyways. :P

And so we are back in reality with a bang.

The holiday was absolutely perfect. Italy was as beautiful as ever and at +37C and over 60% humidity it certainly wasn’t chilly. If you want to see some piccies click on the door below.

And as Stu has written a rather conclusive review on the trip you could always go read that as well. Saves me from writing it up. :D