Sabbatical

I've been in the company for long enough to be elligible for a sabbatical vacation, that's an additional 8 weeks on top of the usual vacations. M successfully took unpaid vacation to come with me and we've been going around for over two weeks. You won't see any pictures for now and for a while but I'm going to try to keep our itinerary up to date here.
We flew to Helsinki, through Chicago and Frankfurt, it took us about 28 hours door to door. It was long enough that we pretty much didn't get any jetlag. We walked all around town enjoyed the quietness and slow living style and after 2 days we were departing for Porvoo, a cute little town a bit east of Helsinki. We spent the best part of the day windowshopping there, and enjoying the views on the old houses across the river. That was our first night of camping. That was pretty much it for classical tourism in Finland, we were going to spend most of the rest of the trip in the nature.
After camping in Savonlinna, the capital of the lake district, we headed ton Linansari, one of the large parks covering the lakes. There we rent a 2 sit kayak for 3 days, packed the camping gear into the kayak and headed for 3 days of island to island paddling and camping in the wilderness. That was also our first encounter with the Finnish national park accomodations. We were amazed at their quality. Sprinkeled all over their national parks are free campgrounds where you can find a dry toilet, a fire pit with gear to cook (including kettle and pan), dry wood, an axe to split it and usually amazing views. We were so enchanted by the trip around the lakes that we decided to go for another park instead of heading early for the baltic countries.
We drove to the northern part of Karelia, to the park of Ruuna, where we settled on an island in the middle of the river. That was probably the most scenic camp spot I've ever been at. We did short hikes in the park, gathered berries, did some rafting in the river's rapids and on the third day we headed farther north towards Lapland. We stopped one day for laundry in the lovely town of Kuhmo, the cultural capital of Karelia, where we visited a few local culture and history museum and learnt all about the Kalevala, the Finnish Epic stories and legends. From there we departed for the Oulanka national park to hike the little bear's trail. By then the weather had started to be quite cold, the Finnish were back at school and most places where empty.
Unfortunately the sun left us and we didn't get a sunny hike in Lapland. The hike was very pretty, we had a close encounter with a reindeer and a not so close one with a moose. We harvested mushrooms for the evening dinner, which we followed by one hour in the sauna, which helped gratly for the coming cold night.
We then drove to Rovaniemi, crossed the arctic circle, and did some shopping in "Santa's official home town". At least his post office is there, and we took advantage of it ;). We finished the day by a long visit to the arctic museum which gave us a lot of insight in the arctic ecosystem and the arctic populations cultures.
Next day was drive fest, we drove all the way down to helsinki in 10h30 to realize that I had forgotten my camera bag and passport at our last spot 250km north, where M courageously drove us back.
Yesterday we took the ferry to Talinn, and had quite a shock when we arrived at the camping. No more beautifull nature, cute little clean log toilets etc... Talinn's camping is a parking lot with a few smelly showers in a hangar nearby. That totally looked soviet style... Anyways, it rained all night and we decided a Hotel bed was in order.

See you