travel Archives -

Pretty buildings & salmon soup – Helsinki essentials!

Hi friends! It’s currently 4am as I’m writing this and sitting at the airport in Helsinki waiting for my flight back to France. I’m tired, hungry and stressed about flying, but my heart is beyond full after this winter break! I arrived in Helsinki on Monday evening, spent two wonderful days with my best friend, and then got to spend the last two days with my little sister. The days were cloudy and grey, but the air felt crispy and I didn’t need to dig out my umbrella once. My luggage now smells like rye bread as I had to cram as many bags into it as humanly possible. I bought two new coffee mugs, 3 skeins of yarn and my sister got me hooked on RuPaul’s Drag Race. I’ve now watched To All The Boys: PS. I Still Love You two times, fallen asleep in the middle of a movie twice and freaked out during take-off once.

Yarn, coffee and more yarn = the perfect holiday!

The biggest piece of news though is how I feel like I’ve finally gotten used to having a life in two countries. Coming to Finland used to feel like THE BIGGEST THING I could do – it felt so special and I remember how I used to savor every single word of Finnish I heard, every chocolate bar I ate and every time I got to order my coffee in Finnish. I’m not saying that coming back home still doesn’t make me jump up and down for weeks, but having amazing things in 2 countries has finally become the new normal. I’m excited to hop on a plane for both directions, and that feels pretty amazing.

As I’m updating this post on a grey Tuesday afternoon, I can’t help but feel like I’d need a second winter break after the first one. I arrived in France on Friday afternoon, we moved to our new apartment on Saturday and now I’m sitting in class trying to get back to the rhythm of things. Slowly but surely!

xx, Kati

Hi guys! Phew I feel like it’s been a hundred years since I last sat down and actually had the time to update anything on the blog. But here I am now! We’ve had a few busy weeks as my boyfriend was on holiday and we even got to have my little sister from Finland stay at our place for a whole week. We drank a lot of wine, ate too many pains au chocolat and watched a bunch of movies so all in all, I’d say it was a very successful week!

Before our overnight trip to Strasbourg we visited the small city of Riquewihr which is located on the wine route in Alsace. The day was a little cloudy so I didn’t get many nice pics but the main street is very picturesque and full of these little wooden houses that are really typical for Alsace and Germany. And in Riquewihr, there are A LOT of all things wine (which makes sense as the city is literally in the middle of vines…). You can find everything from wine tastings to wine shops to cheap boxes of wine, so yeah, I definitely wish we would’ve had more time to spend than just an afternoon but at least we now know that it’s a city definitely worth re-visiting!

And then, well then we went to Strasbourg! I don’t know what it is about the city but I’m absolutely obsessed with it and I already thought about taking up German classes at the uni (as if French wasn’t already enough of a challenge hahaha) and moving to Strasbourg! But we’ll see about that… Well anyway, we mostly spent our time strolling aimlessly around the city, admiring the cathedral and sitting on different patios drinking… need I say it, wine.

And I mean isn’t the cathedral just SO IMPRESSIVE? It amazes me every time how something so massive has ever been built and how it’s still standing. Also we were quite lucky as we went to Strasbourg on a Monday so the city wasn’t too crowded and even the weather wasn’t too hot so we really got all the best things out of a little city vacation.

We also found this super cute coffee place, Café Bretelles, in the Petite France block (the pic on the right), and in my opinion having a gem like this in the otherwise extremely touristy area was like a breathe of fresh air! And the picture on the left is actually from Petite France, which is a small island in the city center full of old houses like these – charming and crowd-free as can be!

I have a few posts in the making at the moment so you’ll be hearing from me again soon! I’ve also been getting my autumn-mood on with a lot of tea, John Mayer and knitting, and I have at least two beanie patterns in mind so keep your eyes pealed for them too!

Tag: travel

Winter Break

Picture diary: Strasbourg

xx, Kati