Clare

Having discovered the joy of burek in Kosovo yesterday evening, we decided to start today the same way After breakfast we set out to see the sights of Pristina. There are not necessarily a huge amount of sights to see in Pristina, so we weren't expecting quite as scenic a day as those we've already had in Peja and Prizren, but I had made a short list of place of note from the Kosovo guidebook. The first of these was just a few minutes' walk away from where we were staying. This is the cathedral of Mother Teresa. If you think it looks pretty new, that's because it is pretty new! Construction started in 2007 and it wasn't formally consecrated until 2017. As we walked through a small park on the opposite side of the road to the cathedral, we got our first glimpse of the next attraction on my list. This is the National Library of Kosovo, which has the dubious honour of frequently being voted one of the ugliest buildings in the world. Up close it is very odd; almost prison-like with all the windows seemingly covered in bars. From a distance it looks slightly better. Just behind the library, this more attractive building is the Church of Christ the Saviour. Construction on this Serbian Orthodox church began in the 1990s, before eventually being halted by the war. It seems unlikely now that it will ever be finished. A little further on, we found one of Pristina's most famous monuments: the Newborn monument. This was first unveiled in 2008, on the day on which Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia. Every year, on the anniversary of independence, the monument is repainted with a different theme. This year's seemed very pretty From here we walked down the capital's main street, Mother Teresa Boulevard. Although around 94% of the population of Kosovo is Muslim, Mother Teresa seems to have a certain amount of popularity as a famous Albanian. The boulevard itself is a nice leafy street and, best of all, it was pedestrianised. The traffic in Kosovo can be a bit manic at times! At the end of the boulevard, we found ourselves in Skanderbeg Square. Skanderbeg was an Albanian national hero who fought against the Ottomans. I think we'll find a square named after him later this year in Tirana too! On the opposite side of the square was a statue of Ibrahim Rugova. He was one of the founding fathers of the independence movement in Kosovo and also the first president. Everywhere we've been seems to have a street named after him. We passed the square which is home to Kosovo's parliament building. It wasn't very impressive! From here we followed a series of smaller streets into the older part of town. The Ottoman part of Pristina is definitely not as well preserved as Prizren, but we did find some attractive mosques. The difficulty was often seeing them (and getting photos of them) across the traffic. We saw the old clock tower, which was more or less the final thing on my list of sights, and then headed back to the more modern part of town. We sat outside at a cafe for coffee and ice-cream... ...then had another walk around before deciding on a restaurant for lunch. I decided to be brave and try a local dish, which was essentially flat meatballs in a cheesy sort of sauce. I had to scrape off the odd mushroom, but otherwise it was pretty good! We finished the meal with crepes and coffee, before heading back to the apartment for an afternoon nap. Our flight home this evening is at the very antisocial time of 23.55, landing in Luton at 02.15 on Tuesday morning, so I'd booked the Airbnb for an extra night. I think that's been a good decision, and has meant we haven't had to spend the afternoon searching Pristina for more sights in vain We've really enjoyed our trip to Kosovo, though; it's probably not a country which is high on most people's bucket lists, but there are actually some really beautiful places here. And visiting a new country has been a good distraction, which is what we needed this weekend.

Our plan for today was to take a bus to Prizren, around 50 miles southwest of Pristina. After experiencing the lack of information in the bus station yesterday, we decided the best approach was just to walk up and down the platforms until we saw a bus with a "Prizren" sign on the front. This turned out to be a pretty good tactic; I knew there was supposed to be a bus at 09.40 but we ended up being at the station early enough to jump on a different bus at 09.15. The journey to Prizren took around two hours and cost EUR 5 each, which felt like a bargain. Prizren is Kosovo's second city, with a population of around 180,000, and it definitely felt like a bigger and busier place than Peja. Like Peja, though, it had a river running through the centre and amazing views of the mountains. We walked alongside the river for a while. In one direction we could see Prizren's fortress, high above the town. We could also see what looked like an old stone bridge. The original bridge here was built in the 16th century, but was completely destroyed by flooding in 1979. What we saw today is a reconstructed version from the 1980s. Prizren is one of the best-preserved Ottoman towns in Kosovo. In addition to the beautiful mosques we did come across the odd church... ...and also, somewhat bizarrely, the odd clown! The views of the mountains were my favourite, though I thought we might be able to climb up to the fortress, so we started walking uphill. That soon gave us a great view of the mosque. A sign confirmed that we were heading in the right direction. Shortly after this, I chickened out, though! The road was not just incredibly steep, but made out of incredibly slippery cobbles. I was fairly certain I could make it up, but not so certain about making it down again. We did get some very scenic views though, even with the short distance we had climbed up. Back down in the centre of town, we started wandering around looking for a good place to have lunch. Everywhere in the main square was pretty busy, so we ended up walking alongside the river again for a while until we came to a quieter cafe. Today's lunch was more expensive because we had a bottle of wine which cost EUR 15... ...but the total for that, two spaghetti bologneses, two puddings and two coffees was still only EUR 31. After lunch we had another stroll around the town... ...and found the Turkish baths, which were very pretty. Then we had another two hours on the bus back to Pristina. We'd worked up an appetite again by this point, so stopped at a bakery nearby our apartment which served amazing meat burek. It was a fun end to what has been another really interesting day in Kosovo

It's been a difficult few weeks, so this is a trip that I wasn't sure we were actually going to go on. On Thursday, we had to say goodbye to the best cat ever, Heidi: Needless to say, Thursday was not a very good day. By Friday morning though, we felt like getting away might be a good distraction and so decided to go ahead with our itinerary as planned. It's actually been a trip that has been fraught with difficulties right from the start, after Wizzair decided to change the time of the flights we originally booked to Kosovo back in October last year. What had started life as a 06.25 flight from Luton to Pristina on Friday morning and a return flight from Pristina to Luton at 11.10 on Monday morning somehow morphed into a 19.05 flight from Luton to Pristina on Friday evening and a return flight from Pristina which lands in Luton at 02.15 on Tuesday morning! Short of a full cancellation, I don't think it would have been possible for Wizzair to make a more dramatic change to our itinerary, and needless to say I was not terribly impressed when I received the email notifying me of what had happened. I had to cancel the airport hotel which I'd had booked at Luton for Thursday evening, completely change the booking I'd made for airport parking, and ultimately add an extra night onto my Airbnb booking, so that we didn't have to check out of the apartment at 10am on Monday morning and entertain ourselves for 12 hours in Pristina until our flight departed some time after 10pm. What a nightmare! On Friday, though, everything ultimately went pretty smoothly with the journey. We didn't get stuck in traffic on the way down to Luton, the airport parking worked more efficiently then I expected it to and while flying Wizzair from Luton is definitely not as glamorous as some of our recent travel experiences, our flight did take off on time and the fact that we'd paid for extra legroom seats meant it was actually quite pleasant. It took just over three hours to reach the capital of Kosovo, and so it was just after 11pm local time when our plane touched down in Pristina. I didn't know what passport control would be like, but it turned out to be remarkably relaxed. The security guards were remarkably friendly and smiley, welcoming us both to Kosovo. It was exciting to be in a brand new country, but arriving at this time of night and in the dark was not ideal. Uber and Bolt don't work in Kosovo, so I'd attempted to pre-book us a taxi using a local app called Etaxi, which I wasn't 100% sure was going to work. Matters were complicated by the fact that getting an esim to work in Kosovo seems nigh on impossible, so I didn't have any functioning data at the point we landed. Luckily, the airport did have WiFi and so with the help of that I was able to open the app and find out the number plate of the taxi we were looking for. After running up and down the taxi rank a couple of times, Tim managed to track it down. Phew! The next obstacle was to actually track down the apartment we were staying in. The owner had sent me photos of the inside and outside of the building, which was very helpful. After a relatively short journey, the taxi driver set us down outside one of Pristina's main attractions: the statue of Bill Clinton. As our apartment is located on Bulevardi Bill Clinton, this was a strong start! Before too long we had found the right place and retrieved the key. The apartment is quite spacious, with a large living area... ...as well as a kitchen and bedroom. The best thing about it is that it is only costing us EUR 30/night!!! It was close to 1am before we finally got to bed, so we weren't planning to make a very early start to Saturday morning. Unfortunately, the blinds in the bedroom turned out not to be terribly effective, leading to the rare result of me being awake before my alarm went off. Tim went out to get some breakfast, after which we set off together towards Pristina's main bus station, which is only a short 10-minute walk away from where we are staying. This gave us the opportunity to admire the statue of Bill Clinton in the daylight. Although having a statue of Bill Clinton might seem odd in a lot of places, he is effectively seen as a hero in Kosovo for his role in leading NATO's intervention in the 1999 war. It amused us to see that Kosovo seemed to be hedging its bets and thanking Donald Trump too. Not quite sure what he's done to merit that! We got to the bus station and found, as expected, that it was a bit chaotic. There's no central organisation of the buses, so you have to find the bus you need and buy a ticket once you get on it. Our plan for today was to travel to the town of Peja in the northwestern part of Kosovo. Luckily we did find an information desk, where a nice lady was able to direct us to the right platform for buses to Peja, and we found there was one waiting. We boarded it but the driver didn't seem to want to take payment, so we were a bit unsure what the system was. It eventually turned out to be that everyone gets on without paying, the driver starts the journey from the bus station and stops at various other bus stops around the town to pick up more passengers, then only once the bus has left the outskirts of the town behind a conductor starts walking down the aisle and taking payment. The trip was a bargain anyway; EUR 5 each for a journey of around 90 minutes. The views as we made our way across Kosovo were beautiful and as we got closer to Peja, the scenery became increasingly mountainous. This shouldn't actually be a surprise, because when you look at where Peja is on the map, it isn't actually that far from where we're going hiking in the Albanian Alps in the summer. Even so, I was surprised by the amount of snow visible on the mountains. Peja, also known as Pejë in Albanian and Peć in Serbian, is the fifth largest city in Kosovo. That doesn't actually make it very large; with a population of around 82,000, it's actually smaller than Nuneaton. It soon became clear that it is much more scenic than Nuneaton, though Peja might not have a statue to Bill Clinton, but we soon discovered that it does have a road named after Tony Blair. This was leading off one of the main squares... ...opposite a war memorial for the 1999 war. There's a river running through Peja and I'd read that there was a nice path alongside it, so we headed in that direction. It did indeed turn out to be really beautiful. I've got no idea what these pink trees are, but I really loved them. We were able to walk alongside the river for quite a long way. We had some amazing views of the mountains, plus the occasional mosque. The water in the river was incredibly clear and a beautiful colour in the sunshine. But the best bit was definitely the glimpses we got of snow on the high mountains above the town. After a while the path we were following led us away from the river, climbing slightly uphill into the forest. Now we were walking high above the river. We passed a spot which is apparently the source of some famous spring water, but weren't brave enough to try it! Then the path led us downhill again to a recreational area, set up for families to have barbeques. From here a bridge led us across the river... ...and we were able to walk along the opposite side of it for a short while, passing some white geese. After this point the path came to an end and the river began to narrow, looking like it was turning into some sort of gorge. We turned around to retrace our steps back towards the centre of Peja. Once there we stopped in a cafe for a drink, then found a restaurant where we were able to sit outside in the sunshine and eat enormous pizzas. Somewhat unbelievably, these large pizzas plus Tim's beer and my bottle of water came to the grand total of EUR 12 I think we can safely say that Kosovo is an affordable destination! And so far it's also turned out to be a very pretty one

Our flight home on Monday wasn't until 5pm, which meant we had almost another full day to spend in France. We decided to do something different with this day and visit a museum called Aeroscopia, which is not far from the airport in Toulouse. Toulouse is famous as the centre of the aerospace industry in Europe, being home to the headquarters of aircraft manufacturer Airbus, and Aeroscopia is a large aviation museum. For what must be one of Toulouse's major attractions, it was surprisingly hard to get to. First of all we had to catch a metro a few stops out of the city centre. Then we had to switch to a tram, which took us on a rather slow journey through the various suburbs of the city. We had hoped the same tram was going to take us all the way to Aeroscopia, but it unexpectedly terminated at a tram junction, where we had to get off and wait for a second tram to take us the final few stops. Once we got off that tram, we had a short walk and then we saw the museum appearing in the distance. We had our first exciting aviation experience before we even made it to the museum, when Matt pointed out a Beluga taking off from the nearby airport. Belugas are giant cargo planes, used to carry huge things like aircraft wings from one factory (where they might be built) to another factory (where they might be added to the body of the plane). They are so-called because they look like a beluga whale As we approached the museum, we were slightly concerned that that might actually be our only aviation experience of the day, because it looked like the place was deserted. There was a risk that a museum might indeed be closed on a Monday, but luckily that turned out not to be the case; I think a Monday in March was just not a very popular date to visit! Soon we were inside and admiring this Lego model of an A380, which had taken over 300 hours to build. Once we'd bought tickets we were able to enter the main museum space and admire the aircraft on display. These ranged from the very old... ...to the much more modern. One of the first things we saw was this enormous plane called a Super Guppy. This is a huge cargo plane, older than the Beluga which we'd seen taking off earlier, which was once used by NASA to transport rocket parts. The front of the plane opens up like this so that big items can be loaded inside. One of the most exciting exhibits was this Concorde. This one was a prototype which was used for testing and experiments. It had a very pointy nose... ...and a very narrow aisle inside. The other thing I was quit excited about seeing was this replica of a Star Wars X-Wing, complete with R2D2 in the cockpit It was made from over 1.5m Lego bricks and took 1,750 hours to build. Once we'd finished exploring inside, we were able to go outside and see a few more aircraft. The most impressive by far was this A380, an absolutely enormous double-decker plane. It's hard to convey in photos just how huge it was! We were able to go inside and explore the interior too, though I forgot to take any photos of that. I think we just added flying on a double-decker plane to our bucket list though Once we'd seen everything there was to see at the museum, it was time for us to travel to the airport. We really weren't very far away from the airport geographically - only a few kilometres - but it didn't look like it would be an easy walk, so the plan was to use public transport. That turned out to be slightly harder than I expected; we had to retrace our steps several stops on the tram to the junction where we'd changed trams this morning, then wait quite a while for an infrequent bus to take us the final five minutes or so to the airport. But we made it and before too long we were in the air, with a great view back down towards the museum as we took off. The meal on the plane back was chicken salad, which was a bit too healthy for me. The tiramisu was good, though! The flight was a fairly short 90 minutes and before long we were flying over central London, on our way to Heathrow. The UK felt rather cold and grey compared to the south of France! It was a great trip though, and definitely feels like we were away for longer than four days

The good news was that the weather was forecast to be much brighter today than yesterday. When we stepped outside of the apartment in Toulouse it was a bright sunny day, without so much as a cloud in the sky. Our plan was to visit two towns - Gaillac and Albi - which are both located on the same train line. Gaillac was our first stop, after about an hour on the regional train from Toulouse. We found the main square full of some kind of Sunday market. Gaillac is a very pretty town, with lots of medieval buildings. The biggest building in the town is the Abbey of St Michel. The abbey is situated on the banks of the river Tarn. The river itself is large and fast-flowing, with a big weir. We walked around the back of the abbey... ...and got a view back towards the bridge over the Tarn we'd just been standing on to photograph the abbey. Then we looped around through a park, which was beautiful in today's bright sunshine. We were on a strict timetable as we only had about an hour in Gaillac before our next train on to Albi. Gaillac and Albi are very close, so after a journey of less than 15 minutes we had arrived in our second destination. Albi is famous for its enormous cathedral and we got a glimpse of it in the distance as soon as we arrived. At least there was no doubt about what direction we needed to walk in out of the station to get to the centre of town! We passed a war memorial... ...walked through a square with pink blossom trees... ...and saw that the cathedral was now getting closer. It really looks more like a fortress than a cathedral! It was after midday by this point, so we found an Italian restaurant where we could sit inside and eat. Although it was sunny today, it felt quite chilly in the wind. Although we didn't run into any Zamenhof Streets in Albi, Tim did spot the Esperanto word "akvo" on this multilingual water bottle in the restaurant. After lunch we headed out to explore a bit more of the town. The cathedral is so enormous that it's hard to give an impression of its size in photos. We went inside to have a look around. The interior was spectacular too; I really loved the ceilings in particular. Leaving the cathedral behind, we walked downhill towards the river. Albi is also situated on the river Tarn. We had a good view of the old bridge, which was originally built in the 11th century. It was a lovely scenic walk alongside the river Like in Gaillac, the river is very fast-flowing here and we passed a hydroelectrical plant. Once we reached this newer bridge, we began climbing back uphill towards the town centre. There was just time for one more view of the cathedral, as we headed back towards the station for our train to Toulouse

The plan for today was to visit Carcassonne, a town around 60 miles southeast of Toulouse. The weather was not forecast to be as good as it had been yesterday, and during the night Tim and I could definitely hear rain beating down on the skylight window of our bedroom. When we stepped outside around 09.30 this morning Toulouse did look a bit damp, but the day seemed like it had the potential to brighten up. The journey to Carcassonne took a bit over an hour on a regional train. Soon we were stepping out of the station into the newer part of the town where we found a Carcassonne sign... ...and Matt even took a photo of us together From the station it's a walk of 15 or 20 minutes to get to the famous old town. We walked through some pretty gardens, complete with very large French flag... ...then found ourselves at a bridge over the river Aude, from where we had our first view of the medieval walled city. And what a view it was! We had actually intended to be walking across the older bridge you can see in the distance in this photo, so we needed to make our way in that direction. Soon we had made it to the right part of town and could start the uphill walk towards the castle walls. There was a fair bit of uphill, but it was definitely worth it. Although it wasn't the sunniest of days, the walls still looked incredible. The rain was just about holding off, though it did feel quite windy, as we started to explore. The nice thing about being here on a not very sunny day in March was that the town wasn't full of tourists. Carcassonne is beautiful but the town inside the walls is quite small, with narrow streets that get absolutely jam-packed with tourists at the busier times of the year. In 2016 Tim and I stayed in a little apartment inside the city walls for a couple of nights and were able to walk around the walls in the early morning, before the hordes of tourists arrived. This morning it felt like we were getting the same experience of walking around deserted walls, although it was closer to midday. Unfortunately, the weather didn't 100% cooperate and the clouds were starting to look a bit threatening. At some point it started to rain more heavily and we figured it would be a good opportunity to head into the centre of town and find somewhere to eat. Indoors, today! We did find a really nice restaurant with an affordable menu of the day. I had pate, lasagne and a sugary crepe to finish By the time we'd finished eating, the weather in Carcassonne had markedly improved! It was still quite chilly if you stood in the wind, but there was now a beautiful blue sky. We retraced some of our steps from earlier, enjoying the views of the walls with better weather. There were some nice views out over the surrounding countryside too. I thought I might even be able to see a bit of snow on top of one of the mountains in the distance. Eventually it was time to start the climb back down towards the newer part of town. It was much easier going down than up! Tim and I had one more thing which we were hoping to do while we were in Carcassonne. When I'd been trying to pin the location of the train station on my offline map before the trip, the name of one particular street caught my attention. We've been to Carcassonne so many times and never realised that it had its own Zamenhof Street! We had to walk about a kilometre out of our way to find it, but we tracked it down without any problems... ...and managed to get a few good photos Then we had a kilometre walk back to the town centre to meet up with the others and catch our train back towards Toulouse. It was a fun end to what has been another fun day in France

Last year when we were booking cheap flights to Malaga, we also found cheap flights to Toulouse in the same BA sale. As Tim used to live in Toulouse and still has friends there, taking advantage of those seemed like a no-brainer. Tim and I booked initially, then we were later joined by Matt, Alfie and Max. Matt and Alfie had already been to Toulouse with Tim once before in 2024, but it was going to be a completely new experience for Max. The reason the flights were such good value was probably because the flight to Toulouse was departing at 06.00, making it the very first flight of the day out of Heathrow Terminal 3. We travelled down to the airport on Thursday evening, staying overnight at a nearby airport hotel, but even so we had to agree to meet up in the hotel lobby at 04.00 this morning, so that we had enough time to deposit the car at the airport parking and catch the bus to the airport. It was a seriously early start, but at least being the first flight of the day meant that we were able to take off relatively on time by Heathrow standards and we were soon on our way towards Toulouse. We'd had time for a very quick initial breakfast in the lounge, but were soon served a second breakfast on the plane. It was a pretty quick flight - less than two hours overall - and so we had landed in Toulouse before 9am, local time. Because we'd been sitting towards the front of the plane we were first in the passport control queue and soon sitting on a bus, on our way towards central Toulouse. It was an extremely sunny day in Toulouse, completely different to the wet and windy weather we'd been experiencing in the UK on Thursday. The weather isn't forecast to be great for the entire trip - with some rain expected tomorrow in particular - but today we were definitely regretting the jumpers and coats we'd brought to be on the safe side! We were stuck carrying everything around with us until 4pm, when we'd be able to check into the AirBNBs that we'd booked. So that we didn't just spend the time loitering around Toulouse, Tim had pre-booked train tickets for us to the nearby town of Montauban. After a short walk of around 20 minutes or so, we were at the main train station in Toulouse ready to get on the train. The train was a very old-fashioned intercity, split into compartments, but it turned out well because we got an entire compartment to ourselves. After a journey of around 30 minutes, we arrived in Montauban and started walking towards the old town. It was a really beautiful place, with a huge old bridge across the river. Once we got towards the middle of the bridge we had great views of the part of town we'd just walked from and the other, newer bridges across the river Tarn. We could soon see the old town appearing on the other side of the river. We found the local war memorial... ...and this impressive building, which was the church of St Jacques. From there we wandered through the streets of the old town until we came to the main square, Place National. This was a really pretty square, with a big reflective pool of water in the middle. We stopped for a drink at one of the cafes in the square and ended up getting lunch there too. It was so warm in the sun that it actually felt like there was a risk of getting sunburnt; an unexpected problem in March! After lunch we walked around the old town so more until we located the cathedral. This was an absolutely enormous building and very impressive. The cathedral was set in a square with pretty gardens. There were lots of flowers out already and even the magnolia was blooming. It felt like we'd seen the main sights of Montauban by this point, so we headed back across the river towards the train station. We had tickets for a specific train just after 3pm, so there was just time to fit in some ice-cream before it was time to board. By the time we were back in the centre of Toulouse it was around 4pm and we were allowed to access the apartments we'd booked. Both are on the third floor of buildings - so quite a lot of staircases to climb to get to them - and once you arrive, you find they make creative use of space. The apartment Tim and I are staying in has a nice living area... ...but navigating the bedroom requires caution; the ceiling is rather low in places Once we'd checked in I was intending to have a brief 30-minute nap and then do the blog. That accidentally turned into more like a 2-hour nap, so by the time I'd woken up it was time to go out in search of dinner. Toulouse was really busy in the evening, but eventually we found a restaurant in the main square where we could sit outside... ...and eat some amazing Italian food. It's been a fun day, but a tiring one! Time to get some sleep before tomorrow's excursion to one of my favourite places in France - Carcassonne

We've had a great time in southern Spain this weekend and it feels like we've been away longer than a couple of days. Today it is time to head home, but as our flight back to Gatwick isn't until 8pm we had time for another visit to Malaga first. We checked out of our hotel in Algeciras around half past nine and walked towards the bus station. I'd booked us tickets in advance on a bus which was departing at half ten and would take three hours to get us back to Malaga. We were a bit unclear about how a journey which had definitely only taken two hours in the direction from Malaga to Algeciras was going to take three hours in the opposite direction from Algeciras to Malaga, but it turned out that somehow it did. I think the bus we caught on Friday some sort of express, whereas this one stopped at at least one extra station and seemed to spend a bit longer waiting around at each stop on the journey. It was some time after half past one when we finally arrived in Malaga. Our first stop was the cafe near the bus station where we'd had a drink after our arrival on Friday. It felt even hotter today than it had on Friday and I had my first Aperol Spritz of the year sitting outside in the sunshine From there it was a relatively short walk into the historical centre of Malaga. We soon found ourselves on a street which was decorated with the most beautiful Christmas (?) decorations. It was difficult to capture in a photograph but they were really sparkly and glittery That street led us into one of Malaga's main squares. It was really pretty here too. We'd been fairly adventurous by ordering Spanish food yesterday, but today we decided to stick to something more normal and found an Italian restaurant. Tim had lasagne and I had a huge pizza. It was lovely to have another meal outside. Afterwards, we had a final stroll around the streets of Malaga... ...where we found the city's enormous cathedral. Then it was time to catch the train back towards the airport, where we found some comfy seats to relax in the lounge and catch up on the blog!

Today's excursion didn't require taking a ferry; just a short bus journey to the nearby town of Tarifa. This was a place we'd missed on our 2021 road trip around Andalusia, but I'd since read that it was the southernmost point of continental Europe, so I thought it would be a fun place to visit. The bus from Algeciras cost €2.60 each and after around 30 minutes we were already disembarking in Tarifa. A short walk from the bus station took us to the gate into the old town. We wandered through the little white streets. You may not be able to make it out on the photos, but there were oranges growing on the trees that lined the main street. We found what seemed to be the town's main church... ...and then made our way downhill towards the sea. From here we were able to walk alongside the old town walls. We could see land on the other side of the sea and an info board confirmed that we were looking across to north Africa. In the picture below, the small hump of land on the far left is the Ceuta peninsula that we were walking around yesterday Otherwise, everything we were looking at was Morocco. As we made our way around the coast, we passed some large fortifications. There was a big, traditional-looking castle with a huge tower... ...and also this smaller but more elaborate castle on a hill. On our other side, the coastal views continued to be beautiful. There were some gorgeous sandy beaches here. We were headed towards a causeway which links the town to a small island that is officially the southernmost point in continental Europe. The sand actually turned out to be a problem here, because Tarifa is an exceptionally windy place. You can't see it in the photo, but sand was being blown across the causeway from the beach on the left-hand side and hitting everyone who tried to walk across. The sand really stung when it hit you, but we persisted and were rewarded with some amazing views. Because Tarifa is so windy, it's a popular place for sports that require wind and big waves. Some of the waves today were absolutely enormous. There were lots of people in the water, doing something which - now I've googled it - I've figured out was kite-surfing. They were essentially on surfboards attached to kites which, when they positioned them in the right direction, would lift them up high into the air. It looked absolutely terrifying! It was fun to watch, though From the causeway we had a beautiful view of the bay. And at times we could even see rainbow colours appearing the spray from the waves. You can see from my hair how windy it was Eventually we made it to the end of the causeway. The island at the far end has historically been used as some sort of military base, so you aren't allowed to go past these gates. A sign informed us that we were indeed at the southernmost point. We turned around and started heading back towards the town. We saw a ferry heading off to Morocco; apparently it's only a 45-minute trip from here. By the time we'd finished walking across the causeway we had sand everywhere; it was even coating my face where it had got stuck to my suncream. It was a really cool place to visit and a lot of fun to watch the kite-surfing, but a bit of a relief to get back to a part of town more protected from the wind. It was nearly 1pm by this point so to us it definitely felt like lunchtime, although it was still quite early by Spanish standards and some of the restaurants we passed in the town still weren't open. We managed to find one that was and got a table behind a wind-proof screen. We shared some amazing meatballs... ...and finished off with chocolate mousse. It was a really great meal and like everything in this part of Spain, surprisingly cheap. Afterwards we just had time for another stroll through the streets of Tarifa and a coffee at a different cafe, before catching the bus back towards Algeciras. It's been another fun day - and another incredibly hot and sunny one!

The main reason I'd booked us a hotel in Algeciras was not to see the sights of Algeciras, but because it was a good location from which to set off on an adventure today. When we were driving along motorways in this part of Spain back in 2021, we passed lots of signs advertising ferries across the Strait of Gibraltar; both to the city of Tangier in Morocco, and to the Spanish city of Ceuta. When we visited Gibraltar itself as part of that holiday, I was really excited by the fact that we were able to see across to Morocco, and thought at the time that catching one of those ferries would be a great way of saying that we'd been to Africa, without doing anything as scary as properly going to Africa. Returning to this part of the world sat on my bucket list for quite a long time and ultimately got superseded by events in 2024, when we decided to go to Tanzania! But when we found the cheap flights to Malaga for this weekend and were looking for things to do without hiring a car, the idea of investigating the ferries came back to the forefront of my mind. I ruled out the idea of taking a ferry to Tangier once I realised that Ramadan was starting this week and therefore lots of things like restaurants were likely to be closed. That left us with the idea of a day trip to Ceuta, an autonomous Spanish city situated on the north African coast. When I investigated it I found that there were multiple ferries a day to and from Algeciras, so visiting as a day trip was perfectly possible. I booked tickets for the 10.30 ferry this morning, which sounded like quite a civilised time. In reality, it involved a fairly early start because the instructions said we needed to be at the ferry port 90 minutes in advance of the departure time and the ferry port was around a 30 minute walk from where we were staying. We left the hotel around 08.30 and soon discovered that there was absolutely no good reason to be at the ferry port so early. Luckily the port had a nice cafe where we were able to get some coffee, while waiting to be allowed through security and into the boarding area. Everything went very smoothly and by 10.30 we were sitting on the boat, watching it pull away from Algeciras. Ceuta did not seem to be a hugely popular day trip destination - at least, not in February - and so we had the ferry almost to ourselves. The journey was pretty short - only about an hour. There were some big waves once we got out onto the open sea and I was glad that I'd taken a seasickness tablet as a precaution. Unfortunately it was one of those ferries where you have to stay inside - and the windows were rather dirty - so I didn't get any great photos, but we sailed right past Gibraltar, which was exciting. Before too long we arrived in Ceuta. Right outside the port was a large statues of Hercules. I didn't know this until I got online and looked it up, but Hercules is supposed to have smashed open the Strait of Gibraltar, resulting in two pillars; the Rock of Gibraltar on the European side and Monte Hacho in Ceuta on the other side. I must also admit that I didn't really know very much about Ceuta at all before we started planning this trip. The peninsula was originally part of Portugal back in the fifteenth century. At some point Portugal and Spain shared a king and Ceuta ultimately chose to stay part of Spain when they separated, remaining Spanish to this day despite the fact that it is physically part of Africa. Walking around it definitely felt like we were still in Spain and not in Africa. Over the course of the day we encountered several big Spanish flags. As we walked from the port into the historical centre of the town, we passed huge fortified sea walls. In the past Ceuta obviously needed protection from the sea. Today most attention is concentrated on its land border, where an enormous barbed wire fence apparently separates it from Morocco. This is EU territory in Africa, so a very attractive place for migrants to try and reach. The centre of the town is very pretty. It did actually feel a bit Portuguese, with its white churches that reminded us a bit of the Azores. This looked like some sort of official building... ...and this was the main square... ...complete with cathedral. The town hall building was also very attractive... ...and there were some very elaborate lamp posts on the main streets. As we walked slightly uphill through the town, we came across a second statue of Hercules. From here we could see down in the direction of the port... ...and up towards a fortress high above the town. We also caught sight of what was a McDonalds in a surprisingly historic-looking building with a small turret. As you can see from the photos, it was another bright sunny day in this part of the world and we walked past lots of palm trees. We made our way along a promenade which seemed to run down one side of the peninsula. En route there were lots of statues... ...fountains... ...and more flags. After a while we turned off to explore a small park. There were lots more palm trees and exotic vegetation here. The route through the park led uphill, but it did mean that at times we got views back towards the main city where we'd started from. As we got higher, the surroundings became even prettier. I loved the yellow flowers covering this hillside. Unfortunately, shortly after this point the path was roped off and we weren't able to go any further. We turned around and retraced our steps back down to the promenade. As we continued round the promenade we had great views out to sea... ...and walked alongside more little fortifications. It was much clearer to the eye than it has come out with the camera, but we could see the Rock of Gibraltar across the water. It was really cool to see it knowing that a few years ago we'd been on that side of the water looking over here We walked for quite a long way, all the way to the tip of the peninsula. We passed some great cactuses Maybe not quite as big as the ones we saw in Arizona last year, but still really cool And we had some fantastic views back down the coast towards the centre of Ceuta. It was tempting to continue looping around the peninsula, but we were conscious that we wanted to get back to civilisation on time to still be able to get lunch, so we turned around and started walking back towards the centre. It took us about an hour of walking to get back to the town centre; this has ultimately been a 30,000 step day! Once we'd had some food, coffee and a sit down we still had some time to spare before our boat back to Algeciras, so we decided to explore a little bit of the opposite side of the peninsula. This side was much steeper and we climbed upwards alongside big cliffs. Whereas on the other side we'd been looking back towards Spain and Gibraltar, from this direction we were looking at the Moroccan coast. And we had some great views of it We were conscious that we didn't want to go too far though and risk being late back to the port for the boat, so eventually we turned around and started heading back downhill. No one had been interested in seeing our passports when we caught the ferry to Ceuta this morning, but on the way back to the mainland in the evening we had to go through passport control. The border guard visibly groaned at the sight of UK passports as it meant he had to get his new EES technology working. While all the Spanish people breezed through with their ID cards, we held up one lane of the queue for a good few minutes as he attempted to get the camera to recognise our faces and the other device to recognise our finger prints! Eventually it worked and we were through! The ferry back departed at 18.30, getting us back into Algeciras some time after 19.30. By the time we made it back to our hotel room it was closer to 20.30, so it has been a long day - but it has definitely been an exciting one

At some point last year, we took advantage of a BA sale to book cheap flights to Malaga for this weekend. When I say "cheap", I'm not sure there really is any such thing as a cheap flight anymore, but these were less than £300 each for business class returns, which seemed like a good deal by today's standards. The downside was that the outbound flight was at 06.15 from Gatwick. Gatwick is never a fun drive and in the end we decided to drive down on Thursday night and stay over at an airport hotel. That meant that we were able to set our alarms for the (comparatively!) civilised time of 4am this morning, drive a mile down the road to the airport parking, and be through security at the airport by the time the lounge opened at 5am. We had our first breakfast in the lounge, before boarding the plane and getting a second breakfast during the flight. Having had a sausage muffin for my first breakfast, I went for the pancakes option on the flight and they were really nice The flight to Malaga is around three hours and it was cloudy for the first half of the journey at least. By the time we were coming in to land, the weather had notably improved. We weren't quite sure what to expect on arrival at Malaga airport. We experienced absolute chaos trying to get through the new EES system for the first time back in October in Madrid, before having our fingerprints taken in Helsinki last month. So we thought we were now registered in the new system, but weren't 100% sure what that meant we now had to do when we landed. After getting off the plane, we quickly ended up in what looked like a very long queue, which turned out to be leading towards the registration kiosks. Luckily it moved fairly quickly. We got to the front, scanned our passports and got a message telling us to head to the e-gates. So it seems like we did successfully register in Helsinki. The e-gates were much smoother than they had been in Madrid and we were soon officially in Spain. Phew! We caught a local train from the airport into the centre of Malaga and then had around two hours to spare before we were due to catch a bus to the town of Algeciras, further west along the coast. I'd deliberately left us a big margin in case we ended up queuing at the airport for hours! That meant we had some time to walk around Malaga, which was nice, as the weather was incredible. Look how blue the sky was! It feels like we haven't seen a sky like this in the UK for a very long time! It was also pretty warm - definitely low 20s. I had been debating whether leaving our coats at home was really a good idea, but it turned out that it probably was. We first came to Malaga back in November 2021, in what was our first foreign holiday after the pandemic. I remember being pleasantly surprised by how nice it was, as it definitely wasn't a place that had ever been on my bucket list. If anything, it was even warmer and sunnier today in February than it had been that November, and we had a lovely time strolling under the palm trees... ...and through the various parks. Eventually we came to a view of the Alcazaba, which we'd climbed all the way up to on our previous visit. We didn't have time for that today, but it was still cool to see We turned around at this point and set off back in the general direction of the bus station. Walking through the park felt almost tropical. There were bright orange flowers... ...and these trees which reminded us of ones we'd seen in Tanzania. We found a really nice cafe near the bus station and had some coffee to help us stay awake after the early start. It was one of those places like in Italy, where an Americano comes as an espresso with a little jug of hot water. The bus to Algeciras departed at 13.15 and took just over two hours to make its way along the coast, stopping en route at places like Marbella (which doesn't look particularly attractive, from its bus station at least!). The hotel we're staying at in Algeciras for the next three nights is a couple of kilometres away from the bus station, so we then had a short walk to find it. We passed through the main square, which was really beautiful. These colourful tiles were very reminiscent of Seville. The hotel itself is quite basic, but good value for money; I had some credit to use up on hotels.com after our USA trip last autumn, so this has worked out at less than £50/night. It was about 5pm by this point, which is far too early to consider getting dinner in southern Spain. We decided to have a nap instead and wake up at a more suitable time to go out in search of food.

When we stepped outside of the apartment this morning, it was clear that it was going to be another very cold day. The thermometer on our building was indicating about minus 20. We were going out earlier than normal - around 9am - so it wasn't very bright yet. The reason for the early start was that we wanted to catch the ski bus to nearby Kiilopää, where there are some great snowshoeing routes. There's only one bus per day to Kiilopää and it stops outside one of the hotels in the village at 09.25. The route it takes isn't very direct, stopping at all kinds of other hotels on the way, so it was about an hour later when we arrived at the Kiilopää national park gate. For comparison, this is what the gate looked like when I stayed in Kiilopää in the summer. We strapped into our snowshoes and set off on a route called Poropolku (reindeer trail), which is the easier of the two snowshoeing paths we were planning to follow today. Everywhere looked so different to how it did in July! The first part of the walk involves navigating the edge of a ski run. We always have to be careful not to accidentally trample the ski tracks with our snow shoes. Fortunately, that part is only short and after that there is a proper path to snowshoe on. The sky wasn't anywhere near as clear as it had been yesterday and there was a lot of mist over the hills in the distance. To be fair, the walk had been very misty when I'd done it in July too. The first part of the walk is quite easy, mostly being flat. We passed some beautiful trees as we snowshoed and in one direction I could see the sky perhaps starting to clear a bit. After a while the route crosses a bridge. Obligatory picture of the same bridge in July! Shortly after the bridge, we had to negotiate the reindeer fence. I got quite good at these over the summer but they are harder to climb over when you're wearing snowshoes. After that the path becomes a bit harder, climbing more steeply uphill. There were some great views though, with a little pink becoming visible in the sky where the sun was trying to poke through the clouds. Our route led further and further uphill... ...and the sun began to get stronger. Eventually we reached the summit of the hill we'd been climbing. Under that mound of snow above were the pile of rocks which mark the summit in summer. As you can probably tell from the pictures, it was rather cold up here today! Everything was frozen, even my neck gaiter. There was a fantastic view of the sun though, and we could see that the clouds were starting to move. From here the route leads downhill again. After about ten minutes or so, I was excited to get to this signpost. I remembered taking a picture of this one in the summer and being amazed how high off the ground it was compared to in winter. After this point the path was quite straightforward... ...if a little cold. By midday we'd finished the walk and we had to decide what to do next. There is another snowshoeing route called Kiirunapolku, which we tried for the first time last year. It is considerably harder than the route we'd just done, despite being about the same length, as it involves climbing to the top of Kiilopää fell at 546m. The ski bus wasn't coming back to Kiilopää until 16.45, so we had plenty of time to kill. We decided to give it a try. Our first task was to get to the starting point of the walk. This involved following a much easier 1km trail called Vasapolku. We remembered from when we came this way last year that we'd passed a bench covered in snow. There was so much snow this year that we nearly missed it entirely! Here's Tim pretending to sit down on the bench this year... ...and here's the same pose last year. Definitely more snow this year! Shortly afterwards we found the starting point for the Kiirunapolku trail and got our first glimpse of the Kiilopää fell we were going to climb, just starting to emerge from the clouds. Unsurprisingly, the route started by leading us uphill. The sky really had started to clear up by this point and there were some fantastic colours. The top of the fell started to become clearer. And soon we could see the sun itself. I loved seeing the trees silhouetted against the sky. Though it was a bit disconcerting, being able to see so clearly how far we had to climb. Our route led us uphill, alongside the reindeer fence. I climbed down alongside this fence as part of a walk I did in the summer. As the day had brightened up, we had some great views downhill towards the forests. It was ridiculously cold, though! And there was still quite a long way to go! I'd just paused to take a photo of the scenery, when I realised I could see something unexpected. Reindeer! When you see them lying down in the snow like this, you can imagine how much they must have been suffering during the Lapland heatwave last summer. We'd been climbing for about an hour by this point and we were definitely getting closer to the top. The colours in the sky continued to be amazing and now we could almost see the whole sun. The last part of the ascent was the steepest (and coldest - there was a biting wind!) but eventually we made it to the top. This is our victory selfie When I climbed to the top in summer, the weather turned quite misty and I didn't get a view at all. Today we could see quite far. It was great to have made it to the top, but we still had quite a steep descent ahead of us. The snowshoes and poles were invaluable; I would have struggled to make it down without them. Although we did get overtaken by a very fit Finnish man at one point who appeared to be trail running up and down the hill! In the photo below, you can see Tim snowshoeing alongside what looks like a fence. I climbed up this way in summer, so I can confirm that it is in fact a staircase The sky was still incredible to look at, which is why Tim is so far ahead in the pictures. Every time I wanted to take a photo I had to stop and take my big gloves off. And I kept wanting to take photos Eventually, the worst of the descent was over. From this point we just had a more straightforward stroll through the woods, although still with some great views. We were really lucky with the views, because as we got closer to the Kiilopää centre we could see that the sky was starting to cloud over again. It was about half past two by the time we made it back down, in the last of the daylight. I was very excited to find that Kiilopää was hosting some Moomins ice sculptures this year! Here's me looking very cold with Sniff, my favourite character After all the exertion we were glad to get inside and warm up. The doughnuts are 100% the best bit about the food offering at Kiilopää. As the ski bus wasn't due until 16.45, we had time to get a proper meal in the restaurant though. The restaurant itself is very cosy... ...and it was cool to see old-fashioned snowshoes on the wall. The food is not going to win any prizes, though. I reverted to one of my staple choices from last summer; ham, blue cheese and tinned peach pizza By the time we'd finished eating and went back outside to catch the bus, darkness had well and truly fallen. The ice sculptures looked great illuminated in the dark though. It's been a really fun, although tiring day. We caught the ski bus to Saariselkä and then went back to the apartment to start packing up our stuff, ahead of our early morning flight from Ivalo back to Helsinki tomorrow morning. It's been another fantastic trip to Lapland, and I have a feeling that it won't be our last

When we left the cabin this morning, it felt noticeably colder than it has for the past two days. The thermometer outside suggested that it was about minus 18. The good news was that the sky seemed to have cleared and it didn't look anywhere near as cloudy as it had yesterday. Our plan for this morning was to rent snowshoes. We went to the office of the company that we normally use, but found that they weren't opening until 11.30 today for some reason. It was only about 10am by this point so that was unfortunate; we didn't want to miss half the daylight by standing outside waiting! We ended up walking around the village trying a couple of different places, until on our third attempt we found somewhere we could rent them from. Phew. Snowshoes obtained, we set off to the national park where we were going to complete part of a route called Iisakkipää. There were some lovely sunrise colours in the sky as we set off. The route starts by following the beginning of the Aurorapolku trail which we completed earlier in the week. At the point at which the path reaches the edge of a little gorge, the Iisakkipää route branches off. In summer, this gorge is really rocky. The trail follows along the edge of the gorge for a while. Then it comes to a really steep slope, which I never enjoy trying to navigate my way down. Here's Tim climbing back up to show how steep it is. In summer there is a series of little steps to help you climb down. Once you've successfully navigated that slope the path becomes a bit easier, leading through the woods. We passed a rather concerning hole in the snow! Then we snowshoed through a pretty little valley. In summer there's a little stream here. The colours in the sky were beautiful as we continued to walk. As we climbed higher and the sun got stronger, they became even brighter. I may have taken just a few photos! It was really nice to see a blue sky too after all the whiteness of the past few days. At one point when I'd stopped to photograph a tree, I caught sight of something moving. It turned out to be a ptarmigan, very well camouflaged against the snow. Unfortunately Tim was too far ahead for me to shout him to come back! Never mind, I snapped a couple of pictures and continued on my way. It is difficult to take pictures when you're snowshoeing, especially when it's as cold as it was today. You have to stop, disentangle your hands from your pole straps and then take a glove off. I kept seeing things I wanted to photograph, though The path continued to climb higher. We walked past all these tiny little trees, buried in the snow. It was around midday by this point, so the sunrise was about to turn into sunset. Eventually we caught sight of a big fell in the distance. At this point the small path comes to an end and you have to walk on a ski run for a short distance. Luckily there didn't seem to be any skiers out and about here today. Eventually you get to a point where the ski run becomes just a ski run and there's a sign telling you not to walk any further. In summer this part is a normal hiking trail and I walked along it on my way to the Rumakuru gorge. Look how different it is without the snow!! The two photos are pretty much taken from the exact same place, so I can even identify individual trees between the two pics. The summer hiking trail is a lot narrower than the winter ski run. The winter hiking route turns off to the left here and loops back to Saariselkä. We always opt out of that part of the loop and retrace our steps back the way we came, because the other half of the loop involves a very steep slope. In summer, you can see that this signpost is a lot higher off the ground than it looked with all the snow today. Here's me with the sign in summer... ...and here's me with the sign today. As you can see, it really was cold today! My hair had completely frozen! Tim's beard had frozen too! It was fun taking photos, but in this cold we didn't want to linger longer than necessary. We turned around and set off down the ski track again. The trail was just as scenic on the way back. The sky was getting mistier in the distance though and the sunset wasn't as visible as the sunrise had been. By the time we were got back to the national park entrance, Tim's entire ponytail was turning white! I thought that was it for the day's excitement, but later this evening I got a notification that the northern lights were visible outside. I didn't think we'd see them again with all the cloud we've had over the past few days, so this was really exciting. There seemed to be a lot of light pollution this evening, so it was a struggle to capture them in photos at times. It was a really amazing display though. We even saw the purple lights again! They appear really suddenly, dance in the sky and then disappear. Definitely worth coming outside for, even if it was incredibly cold. By the time we'd finished taking pictures, our fingers needed a bit of warming up! It was a great end to what has been a really fun day

We decided to go out for dinner last night and try a new Italian restaurant in Saariselkä. I had a pizza, which I'm pretty sure wins the prize for best pizza I've ever had in Finland. Based on the quality of other pizzas I have had in Finland, it is not actually a high bar to clear. There was the tinned peach pizza I had in Kiilopää over the summer... ...and this one drizzled in béarnaise sauce which I had at a different restaurant in Saariselkä back in 2023. I think yesterday's pizza would have been recognised by Italians as actual pizza, so definitely a big improvement Not sure whether the Italians would recognise the lasagne Tim had as actual lasagne, though; it was made with reindeer ragu and topped with crisps. It remained very cloudy overnight, so no northern lights. When we got up this morning we found that it was a bit warmer than yesterday; around minus 7. There was a digger busy outside, clearing snow away from roads and driveways. As we walked down the main road, I realised that the locals had turned a frozen lake into an ice hockey pitch. This is what it looked like here in summer: We'd enjoyed climbing to the top of the Kaunispää fell on Tuesday, so the plan was to repeat that walk today. As we set off, I noticed some footprints that looked like they might have been left by an arctic hare. We caught sight of one in the woods once on a previous holiday, but no luck this year. As we made our way up the hill, we passed all kinds of beautiful snowy trees. The weather was still extremely cloudy, so the colour of the sky and the colour of the snow were essentially the same. As we got higher, the clouds meant we couldn't see very far into the distance. It was still a beautiful walk, though. And as you can probably tell, I never get tired of taking photos of the trees! I just went back and had a look at last year's photos on Kaunispää and the trees were surprisingly green up here too. They definitely didn't look like that this year! Some of them seemed to have frozen in quite unbelievable shapes! This solitary tree marked the point at which we knew we were almost at the summit. Everywhere looked so white today that my phone camera struggled to focus and pick out the Saariselkä sign against the background of snow and sky. We made our way towards the restaurant at the top of the hill to warm up. It's very warm and cozy inside... ...and always cool to see how snowed over the windows are from inside. We had the same meal as on Tuesday. Just as we were finishing eating, two large coaches full of Chinese tourists arrived and it became a bit less peaceful! I'd seen some people climbing to the top of the triangulation tower when we'd arrived earlier, so decided to give it a go and see whether it was possible in winter. The steps were actually well cleared of snow and ice, so it was fine. The views from the top were very different to what they had been like in summer. Look at this... vs this... ...and this... vs this. In summer I'd been able to see a long way into the distance... ...whereas today I could barely see anything at all. Tim did spot a column of snowmobiles coming up the fell, though. Some people seemed to be passengers in a snowmobile taxi, which looked fun We set off back down the hill again. There was plenty of time to admire the trees again before we made it back to the village. Once we were back on the main road, we were able to look up and see the cabins, which are towards the top of the hill. It was another fun day Given the clouds, I don't think we'll be seeing any northern lights tonight though!

As predicted, the sky wasn't clear enough last night to see any northern lights. When we stepped outside this morning, we found that the temperature was a bit warmer than yesterday at around minus 11 degrees... ...but the sky was still very cloudy and overcast. We started walking through the village, past a shopping centre... ...where I realised there were enormous icicles hanging off the roof! Then we followed a trail which led us out into the forest. We were following signs to a place called Laanila, which is an even smaller village just outside Saariselkä. Or, at least, we were trying to follow signs! Luckily we've been here before, because the signs were quite iced over There isn't very much in Laanila once you get there, but it's a nicely maintained winter walking trail through the woods. The trees were completely covered in snow today; it felt like we were walking in Narnia Some trees were completely bent over... ...while this one had already fallen over and collected a lot of snow on top of it. It's really interesting comparing the photos to when we did the same walk last year. The trees were a lot greener then... ...and the signs were a lot more readable. It's definitely been a colder winter this year! For me, of course, it was also interesting to do a comparison to what everywhere had looked like in summer. I hadn't followed this exact trail in July, but I'd walked through Laanila on the day when I was transferring between Saariselkä and Kiilopaa. The trail I'd walked along was this one in the photo below, running alongside the fence. In winter, this is a cross-country ski run. In summer it was a nice hiking path! This is the winter walking path we'd followed today... ...and this is what the same route looked like in July. I love seeing the contrast! By this point we were pretty much at Laanila. We had a walk around, confirmed there was still nothing to see there, and then started heading back through the woods. It's quite a long walk, though mostly flat. Today has been a 15,000 step day. On the way back we crossed over a snowmobile route through the forest. No sign of any snowmobiles today, though. Then we were more or less back to Saariselkä It was still looking very overcast, so not sure we're going to have any luck with the northern lights tonight!