A quick recap from 2013...

This is a picture of Sandy, from down by the lake, Palvajarvi, which is only about 20 metres from the front door! You can see the jetty that we dive from into the water.

Just out of the picture, to the right of the red geranium flowers is one of the two saunas that we can use. The one here by the lake is a wood-burning sauna, with a little furnace, that you burn birch wood in, to heat the sauna. It's a wonderful sauna, with a fantastic, even heat that produces wonderful sweat, and of course, with the lake right next to it, it's marvellous just to leap into the water straight from the sauna! Back up at the house, there's a hot-tub, which is filled by a pump which takes water directly from the lake, and is heated very efficiently by another little wood-burning stove.

The house itself sleeps up to 10, and there's a little cabin at the side of the garden with bunk beds that can be used in the summer. There's another large sauna in the house that the owner Timo added a year or so ago, but we didn't bother using it last year, as the lakeside one is so good. Maybe this time round we'll try it. It's difficult to imagine a nicer setting than this cottage has.

We've stayed in a wide variety of cottages in Finland over the years, which you can see from looking at the previous years' blogs, but this one is hard to beat. In a word- it's heavenly!