I haven´t been uploading much lately. The reason is that I am still recovering from this years extremely awesome summer. I´ll probably be uploading few blogposts during the upcoming weeks since its just simply impossible to include all our trips, experiences, and memories in just 1 blogpost.

So let´s start from the “beginning”.

Surprising my family by travelling to Finland

My last blogpost was from July, and we had just arrived to Andorra after spending few weeks on the coast of Spain. I was talking about planning some trips to the coast etc. which was a complete lie, since I know my mom reads my blog… She´s my biggest fan (and maybe the only one hahahah). So, I did not want her to know what I actually had in mind.

I hadn’t been back to my home country (Finland) for over 2 years, and I hadn’t neither seen my dad since then. He was turning 70 in August, and I thought, why not go to Finland as a surprise birthday present for him.

Easy as that – I booked a flight and decided to travel home to surprise my family and friends. My mom and dad had literally no idea, I was even putting fake photos in Instagram that I was in Andorra so that my mom would not suspect anything.

After over 50 hours of travelling due to shit connections with flights, trains, busses etc.…. I finally arrived to my hometown. I told my mom to send me a photo with the views from our balcony, and there I was standing downstairs in the parking with flowers waiting for her reaction. The reaction was priceless, and we spend quite some time just hugging and crying together when I walked through the door. I want to add the videos here because I think it´s such a beautiful post-covid reencountering. I was so happy that I decided to travel to Finland.

 

 

I spend 1 week in my hometown, meeting friends and spending time with my mom and dad. The weather was awesome, it was like Finland really was happy for having me back.

 

 

Not only was the weather awesome – There was also this yearly music festival in my hometown, with legendary artists like Bonnie Tyler! I obviously had to go, maybe also because I had some of my friends pushing me to go haha.

 

 

Great weather, awesome company, and an amazing surprise for my family…. That wasn’t the only thing I had in mind when I booked the flights to Finland……

Barcelona – Sitges & Andorra with mom

I had booked a 1 way trip from Barcelona to Helsinki – since my intention was (as well) to try to convince my mom to travel back with me to Spain & Andorra. I knew she missed travelling so much but was too scared to travel by her own. It took me few days and some wine to convince her – BUT LOOK AT US!

 

 

I must add this photo as well since my mom was so surprised that everything was closed, and there was literally nobody in the airport of Helsinki. Covid you know….

 

 

Sitges for few days

So, I booked the train tickets, and the flight tickets, and then suddenly we were there – In Sitges (one of my moms favourite towns)! And we had still 2 awesome weeks ahead together!

After some very long and complicated hours, we finally arrived. The plane was extremely late, and my mom had breathing issues due to that she is not get used to wearing face mask for so long. And in the train, airport, and plane you must wear it continuously. My mom still said after the trip – “I would do it again if I would have to”. I guess she reaaaallly missed travelling.

In Sitges my boyfriend and our dog Mamba was waiting for us, and that was also such a beautiful reunite. Here are some memories from Sitges.

 

 

Next up: Andorra

After relaxing and strolling around in the cute little streets of Sitges, we drove up to Andorra. My mom is also a big fan of Andorra, and I mean, who wouldn’t be, it’s a gorgeous country. Not much to add here, since a picture is worth more than a thousand words… So here you have a few thousand words:

 

 

Last surprise experience: Barcelona

Last, but definitely not least, I invited my mom to Barcelona. I found this freaking awesome hotel in front of the Cathedral of Barcelona, where we stayed for few days. I can highly recommend this hotel if someone is interested (but take the rooms with the views): http://hotelcolonbarcelona.es/.

Just look at the views from our room.

 

 

The hotel also has a very nice rooftop bar / restaurant that I highly suggest visiting. You can go there although you’re not staying in the hotel.

 

 

Both me and my mom have visited Barcelona many times, but this city still always manages to amaze me. So many beautiful buildings, monuments, streets…. You don´t need to have any plans while in Barcelona – just being there is already something special. And that is exactly what we did, enjoyed our time being together, acting like proper tourists of course, like we´ve never been there before.

 

 

As a farewell present to my mom, I booked a 2-star Michelin restaurant experience (https://enotecapacoperez.com/).

My mom has worked (now retired) within the restaurant and hospitality business / sector during whole her life, and she had never been to a Michelin star restaurant. I obviously had to change that. There were plenty tears of joy, and we had such a great time, I guess you can tell it based on my mom’s face haha. This restaurant is very nice, and the service was just top-notch.

 

 

I realized, while editing the photos, that I’m wearing the same dress in a lot of pictures, I guess it was my favorite dress for summer 2021 haha. Same happened with my mom, she liked one of my dresses so much, so she decided that it was hers, that´s how close we are with my mom.

Back in Finland for 24 hours

Since my mom had some problems with the mask and breathing on the way to Spain, I didn’t want her to travel back alone. So, I decided to travel with her, back to Finland, everything went well so no problem this time. I guess it was just the first time when you´re not get used to be within closed spaces and the face mask on, for such a long time. It was nice also, since I got to meet some of my friends and enjoy some proper Finnish shrimp sandwich while being back in my country for 24 hours.

 

 

What a trip, memories, and such a feelings…. I´m so happy I decided to go to Finland, I was kind of in-between if I should go or not. But definitely one of the best decisions I´ve ever made. Now I wish I could go back in time and do it all over again.

This was in the beginning of August, since I haven’t uploaded anything in a long time, there’s plenty of more blogposts to come during the upcoming weeks – so keep posted!