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This is the mosque outside Radisson SAS hotel in Istanbul. The bridge behind will take you from Europe to Asia. This was the first picture transferred to my blog using Shozu. An excellent feature of the SW is that it can tag the pictures with GPS coordinates if you're using for example N95 as I am. You can also use it to upload pics to Flickr. Excellent tool.

More pictures from Linate

All this on one visit...

Pictures from Linate

As I was waiting for my wife and daughter to arrive at Milan, I took some pictures of the facilities at the airport. How's the airplane maintenance?

In search of a free lunch.

I bought a Samsung TV last Christmas. It came with a free accommodation anywhere in the world. We chose Italy;-)
As I wanted to see if there really is a free trip, I booked the flights with my frequent flyer miles. There was only one problem: Finnair had only one seat available. So I booked Minna and Kia SAS flights through Copenhagen. It was a good opportunity to spend my remaining Eurobonus points. I am not going to collect anymore SAS miles.
So here I am, and have been since 10am, waiting for my family to arrive. ETA is 23:21 so I have been driving around the outskirts of Milan the whole day but what wouldn't a man do to get his family a free holiday (taxes, extra bed surcharge and car hire excluded)? I also took a nap on a shopping mall parking lot.
This is my first blog entry with my new and excellent N95 phone. I am glad that the battery lasted for the whole duration of the blog writing... We still have to drive to Lake Garda this night or we'll face more surcharges for not checking in on a specified date. What's with this extra bed surcharge anyway? The accommodation was supposed to be for 2-4 people. We're only 3...
Unfortunately, I cannot attach any pictures with this browser. I took some funny ones from here, Linate airport Milan.

Singapouring rain

I can't get any sleep. No matter if I go east or west, always the same problem. Last night I woke up at 4:45.One of the best things here is the food. With 4.5 SGD you can get delicious meal in a food court. Minna will get an Ipod Nano. 170 euros compared to 258 euros in Finland even better price than in Hong Kong last year. XBOX 360 games are half price but apparently region locked so they will not play on my XBOX. Strange. HMV on Orchard road is great. I bought the latest Gin Blossoms which would be impossible to get from Finland. Why don't they regíon lock CDs? I bet they would, if CDs were invented today.

I start to agree with some of my colleagues that maybe this is a bit boring place even if it has the best taxi ordering system. Just call a number and they say when the taxi will arrive and what is the license plate number. Also the MRT is excellent. If you change a metro in Paris, for example, you have to walk hundreds of meters in a tunnel to get to the next metro line platform. Here your connecting line is across the platform, and the metro is air conditioned. The only annoying thing with the MRT is that you have to get the deposit back and usually it means queueing when buying the ticket and more queueing when collecting the deposit.

Summer is coming. Hopefully this will be one of the last trips before midsummer. I just watched Saimaa-ilmiö DVD. Where can I get Juho Juntunen's book?

The first time in Zocalo

This is not the first time I'm in Mexico City but it's the first time I went to the city center: Centro. Today was the only day I really had any free time here and I went to buy some suvenirs from La Ciudadela market and then I was close enough to walk to Zocalo. Last time I promised myself to buy a guitar from La Ciudadela, but I did not do it. Maybe next time.

It's really a shame how the Europeans built their churches on top of the sacred sites of the native people. There was not much left of the pyramids on Plaza Mayor. It's also interesting how this area used to be a lake.

Funny details from the hotel:

1. Water is apparently drinkable.


2. They change the soaps every day. So I take one shower and the soap is replaced with a new one.


3. The room is huge and the minibar expensive.


4. According to the hotel regulations: "It is strictly forbidden to make annoying noises, cause quarrels, bring musicians or animals into the facilities"

So, musicians or animals, stay away from Fiesta Americana Grand Chapultepec :-) Just kidding, the hotel is quite OK.

I have had some problems sleeping. Last Saturday we came back from Thailand and then on Tuesday morning I was on a plane again heading for Mexico. Because of the late booking, I got flights through Frankfurt and Houston. It took me 24 hours to get here. When I leave tommorrow, it will take only 18 hours to Finland...

Holiday in Hua Hin

The title refers to a Dead Kennedys song Holiday in Cambodia. This is so called "bridge of an ass" like my colleague aptly translated it from Finnish (aasinselkä). Sofitel hotel in Hua Hin was staged as a hotel in Phnom Penh in the Roland Joffé movie The Killing Fields. Well, we did not stay in Sofitel and not even in Hua Hin but Veranda Resort and Spa in Cha Am about 15 minutes drive from Hua Hin http://www.verandaresortandspa.com/. I must say that it was the best hotel we've ever been on holiday. One reason might be that this was actually our first package trip. Usually we have booked flights and hotel separately but now we decided to take a Top Club trip to Thailand. At the same time, a former Finnish MP and her husband stayed in Veranda as well so we were in a classy company. The only drawbacks were the 600 baht that we had to pay every evening to go to Hua Hin for a dinner and night market and the lack of free Internet access (that's why I am writing this blog entry in Mexico City).
Kia also liked the place because we just relaxed by the pool and on the beach. Not like in Florida, where we changed hotels almost every day. So, if you plan to go to Florida, my recommendation is The Sunset Cove in Key Largo http://www.sunsetcovebeachresort.com/. Then again, if you happen to be around Hua Hin, try Veranda Resort and Spa. Spend a little extra and you will get an own villa with a private swimming pool by the beach.

The funniest thing that happened was that when we went to the "Monkey mountain" in Hua Hin, I promised Kia that she can feed the monkeys. So when we got there, we asked one of the sales ladies, what do the monkeys eat and she said water melon. So we bought a bag of water melon and immediately a monkey came and tried to get the bag from Kia. Kia resisted for a while and finally gave up. One monkey got all the water melon... It was not the one on this picture, so this guy's innocent.

Can anyone explain, why this restaurant has such strange opening hours?

And then, I almost forgot: For a frequent flyer it's a good idea to book your holiday flight for Finnish winter holiday (week 8 in southern Finland). The whole family was upgraded to business class and we started the holiday with smoked reindeer and champagne. Thanks, Finnair.

On the go in Kuwait

I should really blog more often. Usually this only happens when I have a free Internet access in the hotel. Radisson SAS is always a good choice, but here in Kuwait it's quite far from the city. Apparently Sheraton has free Wifi as well because that's where I'm currently staying.
Yesterday I walked 6 kilometers in a brisk winter weather. The temperatures range between 12-20 centigrades at this time of the year. Kuwait, as other ME oil countries, has a lot of immigrant workers from India and Philippines. This means that the streets are lined with Western Union lookalikes and international phone call centers. They say that in three years this will be like Dubai. Well, they must hurry up. Even alcohol might be legalized then. FYI, NA means non-alcoholic.

Saikari

This is one of my favourite places in the world, Niinivesi, Rautalampi. If I could get rid of all mosquitos and "paarmas" (horse fly, probably) it would be number 1. We have spent more time here this summer than any of the previous summers. Not only because the weather has been so good. For the first time, we went around Kotasaari near Vaajasalmi by boat. I had studied the map and found out that it might be a beatiful boat ride. My other favourite ride is from Saikari to Lohimaa, Tervo. On that route you will go through Härkäsalmi which has some of the quintessential Finnish lake scenery http://kansalaisen.karttapaikka.fi/linkki.html?x=3488282&y=6976921&scale=16000&text=Härkäsalmi&lang=FI.

Vasamuseet in Stockholm

I have visited Stockholm countless times but I had never visited Vasamuseet. My colleague said that it would be worth a visit and off we went. We took a ferry from Helsinki to Stockholm and we had couple of hours to walk around Stockholm. Because my family was with me, I decided to go to places they might like. We had just enough time to visit Skansen and Vasamuseet. The latter, I must say, is one of the best museums I have ever visited. My daughter was especially interested in the skeletons of the crew members.

Piece of Finland in Dubai

Resaurant is upstairs, apparently...

Visiting UAE

In the end of March, I visited the United Arab Emirates. First, I went to Abu Dhabi for a couple of days and then I went to Dubai. The country gave me some mixed feelings. First of all, this was the place I knew from the postage stamps. I used to have stamps from Fujeira and Sharjah and they usually had pictures of Disney characters and American movie actors and actresses. The funny thing was that the stamps were always unused. When I saw Dubai for the first time it looked like a huge construction site. There were cranes everywhere. I think I heard that 30 % of the cranes in the world are in Dubai. This did not look like the other muslim countries I had seen on TV. They have so much money but almost nothing historic was preserved. This was my main disappointment. What a perfect place for the sports elite of the world to spend their free time...

Authors' Guesthouse, Key West

This time we are staying in one of the B&Bs Author's Guesthouse. One of the prerequisites for Kia was a pool because we spent her birthday here, she wanted to have a pool in the hotel. We stayed in the Wilder room http://www.authorskeywest.com/wilder.htm Yesterday, instead of a cake, we had huge ice creams to celebrate Kia's birthday.
Today we leave Key West and move 50 miles closer to Miami because there are only two nights left of our vacation. The next stop is in Key Colony Beach near Marathon. On the way there we are going to stop at Bahia Honda State Park. It seems to have one of the best beaches in Florida and you can snorkel right off the beach. Maybe we will spot some Key deer on No Name Key. Key deer is an endangered species that only lives here. It's like a normal deer but much smaller.

Relaxing in Key West

This is the end of the Florida Keys. It's only 90 miles from here to Cuba. Yesterday we went to see the sunset celebration on Mallory Square. Many of the performers were the same as two years ago but there were some new ones. There were jugglers, escape artists, a bagpipe player, singers and last but not least: a dog in red shorts on a tightrope. This is also a popular stop for the cruise ships and yesterday there were two of them here. Last time we were here in March and it was really different back then. This time there were no students on a spring break and even though there were a lot people, the town was not as noisy as before. There were more chickens around though...

Another guest at Sunset Cove

Today is Kia's birthday. Our daughter is 9 years old now. The Pirinen family sent a greeting over an SMS. Before we read it Kia was a bit angry because we had not sung to her this morning. Actually, Minna sang happy birthday but she was still a bit asleep so she did not remember it.
In the morning, I noticed another guest below the pier. It's good that this nurse shark was noticed today instead of yesterday because Kia wouldn't have swum at all if she knew that there were sharks around here...

Sunset Cove's regular guest

This bird, whatever it is, is one of the frequent guests. Mostly it was standing on top of the tiki hut on the beach.

Sunset Cove Motel

The upstairs apartment was ours. Excellent sunset view. This is the best apartment in Sunset Cove. Maybe we should've just stayed here for the rest of our vacation. If we ever go to Florida again, we'll skip Orlando and Miami and come directly here and do some fishing and snorkeling. Something had changed here: the talking parrot was gone. Last time here there was a parrot who could imitate cats and say goodbye.

It took us almost the whole day to get from Orlando to Florida Keys but it was worth it. Sunset Cove in Key Largo is a place where we keep coming back. How we found this motel in the first place was the Lonely Planet Florida guide. This is our gateway to Keys and this is our third time here. It’s good to stay here the first night, because it’s still 100 miles from here to Key West. We’’ve stayed quite close to the highway on our previous trips but now we got a room from on the gulfside with an excellent view. I bought some snorkeling gear for Kia and Minna and we went snorkeling. However, this beach is not very exciting snorkeling spot. Maybe we’ll take a trip out on the reef later this week.

Revelation

Suddenly, in Kissimmee, we saw a sign. It told us to turn to Jesus. We turned right.