Joyful Christmas to you all! :)

After rather hectic days of preparation, today is finally a very relaxed and peaceful day of Christmas eve. We are spending it in a very tight family circle. The weather is perfect, there is lot of new fresh white snow... Lots of lights, lots of candles, lots of gifts and... lots of food :D

I wish you all to spend this day with some of the Finnish meaning of it: enjoying the company of your family, apreciating the peace and quiet and recharging the batteries.

Peaceful Christmas to all of you! (as the Finns would say, Hyvää Joulua! :) ) 

PS: And while you are checking the atmosphere of our Christmas from the pictures below, I will rush to join the family at dinner table, enjoy the traditional food and open the gifts :)

 

 

 

Högsåra - no Christmas posts... yet :)

All the blogs that I am currently following are full of great xmas pictures: gift finding and packing, xmas tree decorating, enjoying glögi and other xmas delies, waiting for snow and listening to the xmas songs. Not in my blog.. yet :D We also have xmas tree already, gifts are almost there, many pre-xmas parties already enjoyed, but still in this spare moment that I got now I decided to dig through the summer pictures and continue the holiday" journey". 

Lately I have been quite silent here, due to all the pre-xmas events at work and in private life. Yesterday for a change we spent an evening in a great company of sailing friends. And that is where the inspiration came for today's post :) 

...So Hanko it was. And from there on a great sunny day we headed to Högsåra. (now in winter it seems almost surreal that this pictures are true :) )  

There was just enough wind to sail and we were not the only boat heading in that direction :) 

For me it was the first time in this island, somehow we always chose other destinations and never stopped there. I was looking forward to one more new place. 

Due to the wind forecast out of the two island harbours (Kejsarhamnen and Lillbacka Brygga) we chose the better protected one and ended up in Kejsarhamnen.  We easily found a place in the harbour and went to explore the place. There is a little shop, where you can find all the first need goods, there is a grilling place with some tables and benches, there is a sauna and a little sand beach (only now I realised to have no pics of those..). 

The place was famouse for the fisher-woman, Kejsar Fina,who became personal friend with the Russian tsar family, that returned to the island for 16 times.

But there is one more thing this island is famous for: Farmor's café :) I have heard some much of this place offering as big cake portions as you are able to eat, that we could not skip it :D

Tea refill is also free by the way :) 

And finally there they were... waiting for me :D Carrot cake, berries cake, mud cake, cheesecake.... and it was real, you can take as much as you want for the price of 1 portion :)

Apart from the food (there is also a restaurant), the place is so cute, that I did not know where to look and what to picture :)

Plenty of different dining areas, terraces, toys and games for kids, domestic animals it is like a little summer paradise. I only have a couple of pictures from the outside, as the weather was not so good and it was raining. 

 After eating the enourmos cake portions, we agreed that a walk would definitely be needed! So we headed to check the other harbour, Lillbacka Brygga. 

It seemed to have all the needed facilities there, including little luxurious service: warm filled pancakes and other saulty snacks. Again as a foreigner I am impressed by the level of trust: the food is there open and available and a little cash is close to it, so that everyone pays for what they take. :) 

Next time we decided we would stop in this harbour, it looked nicer and probably had a bit better services. 

Overall Högsåra became one of the favorite places :)

Hanko ♡

Hankoon (Vadelmavene)!

After the 8 hour long leg from Dirham (Estonia) to Hanko by motor, we were happy to finally reach the harbour. There was not even light breeze, the wind meter was showind 0.01m/s, which meant no slightest chance to sail. It was joy to see that the harbour was not fully packed, as it very often is during the short Finnish summer. Maybe one of the reasons was cool weather, that kept many people home. Anyhow, finally we were here again, after 2 years. 

Many people are quite skeptical about this place and critisize it for being always full, noisy,  not having good enough facilities and what not. But I personally love this little town! Each time we come here, I want to have an extra parking day just to walk around and enjoy its "southern" atmosphere, with crowds of people, little markets, small shops, hidden and not beaches, cafeterias etc etc etc... This time was not an exception :)

I fully agree though, that for the harbour fee you have to pay there, all the facilities should be renewed. And the reason why I love coming back here is absolutely not related to the harbour itself, but the town and life of its own in summer.

On the evening of arrival we had a pizza with K, M and D, same friends we spent time with on the Estonian shore, and later, after the "traditional" boat-check tour, had a proper rest.

In the morning it was a new day in all meanings: the weather finally got noticeably warmer, it was our first shorts&t-shirt day :) And the things to do in this lovely place were so many, that we had to wake up rather early to cover as many of them as possible!

The first on the list was "must-do": shopping. With the bikes we headed to the local Lidl and got refills of all the missing food. Of course, with plenty of bags and in hurry to do all the rest that was planned for that day, we attracted the Murphey´s law: one of the bike´s tires was flat already at the parking place. After wasting a lot of time for fetching the tools from the boat and trying to get it repaired by ourselves, we realised that we might need to use the local bike service... Luckily it was open and was relatively close to the harbour. After a couple of hours of lost time, bike was finally fixed and we could go on.

 

By all means I wanted to go and visit The House of the Four Winds! I have been there once during my Finnish holiday, before I moved here. The views are breathtaking not only on the terrace, but also on the way there. It was a perfect late lunch place and we enjoyed it fully :)

The smaller route to this place, meant for bikes and pedestrians, follows quite much the shore curves, after going through the gorgeous villa district, central beach and some hotels.

After the meal we were in a hurry back to the boat, my parents-in-law were coming over to visit us :) After nice time with them and dinner in one of the restaurants close to the harbour, we were meeting my ex-colleague for a drink or two. 

The day seemed very long, as it was so full of all kind of events! But it was just what I expected it to be like...maybe I could skip the flat tire;)

Thanks to my ex-colleague's hint, we were lucky to be right in time for the market the morning after. It was a perfect idea to get all kind of fresh local goods to enjoy later in the next harbour. 

Off we go, but will be back! :)

 PS: as an alternative, on the way back my Captain tired the other harbour, Itämeren portti, which offers rather new facilities. But there too there was an issue: male sauna ran out of hot watter supply...

Dirham - one more Estonian harbour

To be honest, there was one more harbour before we reached Dirham. We stopped for one night in Lohusalu. Great new marina, with all the very modern facilities. Somehow the afternoon and evening were so busy, that I realised only afterwards, that no proper pictures were taken :( well, good reason to go back! :) 

So after one night in Lohusalu, where we had two laundries done, dinner in a restaurant in a great company of relatives and friends, we continued to Dirham. When approaching it, I was not so impressed: big warehouse-like concrete building was right on the shore. But once there, it somehow "disappeared" in the charm of the terrace, sauna, awesome company...

And this is one more harbour, where you have to be careful when approaching, plenty of rocks closer to the shore right next to the route.

 

At arrival it felt like we are somwhere else than Estonia. And even somewhere else than Baltic sea harbour. It looked some "dream-beach-holiday" place. A little terrace on the shore made me realise:WE ARE ON HOLIDAY. It looked like that. It felt like that. 

Of course we had to have the traditional "mooring" beer and cider :) Again a pleasant surprise in Estonian prices... both drinks in a place like that costed only 3 euros :)

 

After some time in the terrace we still had shopping to do. In the little village there is a small grocery store that has all the necessary - and not only :) - stuff. It was in our plans to refill the stock of beer, and in this shop we found among other things, for example, such a rare drink as Lidskoe (beer made in Belarus!). Of course my hubby had to buy the whole box, 24 cans :D. 

After shopping we had a lunch outdoors. The weather got better and better, we almost forgot how much cloths we had to have on only a couple of days earlier. The view was good. The company was perfect :)

Later in the evening we had a sauna booked with the same good friends. It was a great time together, thank you M, K and D :) Though we all agreed that sauna could have one little improvement: ventilation! No openable windows.. no chance to get some fresh air.. it was rather hot! Otherwise the facilities are also quite new and in good conditions.

After a great fun in a great company we were heading towards our boat quite late, well after midnight. And since it was only a day or two after the midsummer, we were lucky to see this sunset. Or maybe sunrise? :D

Overall very positive impression about this harbour.