Day 14 - Saturday 19th July

Video above, showing a summary of our brilliant holiday to this magical land of a thousand lakes in 2014!

Our final full day here in paradise dawned like almost every other morning before it has - perfectly, with a cloudless sky and the temperature rising quickly. I sat outside for a while just relaxing in the warm sunshine while the rest of the family slept soundly.

 Looking out to the lake on the final morning. It's a perfect morning once again!

 Above and below- this double swing is perhaps the main reason I rented this wonderful cottage back in 2012- as Anna always wanted a swing like this at a rental cottage. Lucky I did, as it has proved to be the most fantastic place we have ever stayed at in Finland!

Once we were up and had had a good breakfast, we got ready to head east. From here in western Finland, to a place we first visited in 2008, and where we have spent many happy times since - Varkaus, in eastern Finland. There, we had lunch with our very good friends Jyrki and Mari Ikonen and their boys once again.

By the time we arrived, it was another day that is classified as "hot" here in Finland, that is, it was over 25C, and it was very relaxing to chat and eat in the hot sunshine with our friends. Sandy and Olivia played and swam, and Keith had a good swim in Lake Saimaa, in fact he perhaps misunderstood the instructions I gave him not to swim too far in to the lake, as he went quite a bit further than we had intended him to. When he got back, Jyrki and I joked that we had been thinking about launching the rowing boat to rescue him, but Keith simply laughed and replied, "Don't be silly!"

 Jyrki gets the lunch ready!

 The boys play football. 

Down at the jetty area. Below, Keith gets ready to tackle Lake Saimaa! 

On our return westwards, we passed through quite a few very heavy and thundery showers, but it was lovely again by the time we got back here, so we relaxed over a light final dinner for this year at this cottage.

 Final evening, of sunshine again, here at this fabulous place!

Tomorrow, we leave, and it's fair to say we're all sad about that. It's been a really wonderful two weeks here - the weather has been absolutely perfect, and the lake has been super to swim in each day. We head down to Helsinki for a couple of nights, where we'll stay in the same Hellsten Hotel apartment that we have rented a couple of times before. I'll create and edit a video of the holiday once we're back home, and upload it here, but apart from that - this is (probably) the final post on the blog from this year! But we're looking forward to returning again in 2015!