And BOY can you tell the difference – 5 minutes outside without gloves and hats makes you want to cry….
Breakfast and then on to Santa’s workshop 🙂
Sweet Jesus -23
Reply
Tag Archives: Holiday
Lapland baby
It’s been a pretty long day but we arrived in Kittila finally at around 1pm local time (2 hours ahead of UK time). The transfer on the bus took all of 20 minutes although the sun had gone down not long after we arrived at the hotel (there is only 4 hours of sunlight during the day here at the moment).
Since then, we have sat through an orientation session, eaten dinner in the restaurant (not bad at all for buffet and included mulled wine 🙂 ), taken a nice walk around the local town of Levi (the kids were pulled along in sledges so they were all set) and finished up with a shower before getting settled for bed.
The town of Levi is stunningly beautiful, especially at night with the twinkling of the lights set against the snowy roads and ski slopes.
Tomorrow we set out early doors to Santa’s workshop to play football with some elves, bake some gingerbread cookies, check out the mail room and see Santa himself 🙂
Daddy is trying to persuade all to have a ski taster session – wish him luck as there appears to be resistance in the force…
Winter Preparations
So it seems that winter rain and winds are here even if the cold isn’t yet.
We have begun building up on our winter vacation and rainy dog walking gear so that we don’t have to run around in a mad panic in the days before we head North 🙂
So far we have base layers, snow pants and jackets for all but mummy and the boys all have snow boots which will also prove useful for dog walking in the winter weather later in the year.
By the end of the day we should also have a bag packed to go in the car for that situation where we get caught short following a walk somewhere.
Mummy has also had her flu shot on Friday evening before the fireworks and dinner at Grandma’s house. We are still not sure why the surgery sent a request for her to have the shot and neither are they it seems but she had it none the less.
We are still seeing daytime temperatures of around 15 Celcius which just seems crazy but we are not complaining.
Finally, the boys are back at school in the morning following their two week half term break and th are definitely ready to go back 🙂
Portugal Holiday snaps
Please find the photographs from the holiday in the album below, but before you browse those, check out the video of just one of the caves that we visited during our trip – obviously it is not nearly as exciting on a video, but it still get the point across… WOW
You must 
Benagil Beach and Cave Boat Trip
Today might just have been the best day of the vacation 🙂
We head to the beach that we found when trying to find a way to get a car to the Smugglers Cove just around from Rocha Brava – a nice little beach with next to no car parking available BUT that you would need a car to get there 🙂
We arrived just after 11am as the grand folks had a nice sleep in 🙂 car parking was easy enough and the beach was beautiful shingle free dark yellow sand (nice and fine) but enough to get a decent purchase in for a parasol to stand upright 🙂
We got Elliot, Oliver, Grandma and Granddad a ham and cheese toastie from the beach bar and got some tickets for the 12:30 cave boat trip that claimed to take us to 20 caves in an hour.
Granddad built a sand boat for the boys to play in and Oliver and Daddy went in search of some shells to make the buttons for the starter motor, steering wheel and machine guns (for said boat). The boys played in the boat for almost an hour – incredible considering they both said that had no desire to go to the beach today… 🙁
Then 12:30 came around and our boat arrived on the beach – big enough for 12 passengers and the pilot. The team got the boat ready for us and then pushed us out to the ocean although they were just not quick enough and the waves bashed the boat over to the left before the pilot could get the engine down so we had to rather hastily dismount before the boat overturned (slightly melodramatic, but there was definitely some pain to get us off PDQ:-)) . we got back on board and the engine doewn and we were off – just round the corner to the right and into a small inlet where a cave ahead been worn into the Rock face, and then into the next larger one. In a couple more we found the pilot hit the gas and looked to be aiming for a small hole that ultimately swallowed the entire boat and we disappeared into the mouth of the cave, out of the ocean and into our own tiny hole in the rock – holy hell, this was unexpected but breathtaking all at the same time -WOW.
We continued on to see a few more similarly amazing caves that the boat only just fit into but were breathtaking each and every time. Sadly, the camera ran out of battery about half way around so we do not have photographic (or video) evidence of some of the most impressive caves but the imprints will be in our minds forever 🙂
The cost for this mind blowing experience was €17.50 for adults and €12.50 for the kids – easily the best €100 of the vacation hands down. To the point that I think we will be returning before the week is out for a return journey to see it all again 🙂
Hopefully, tomorrow is water park day at Slide and Splash in Lagoa although our tickets are good for any day this week so we will see how we feel in the morning.
Happy Holidays folks – we are having a ball 🙂