We spent the last week in Denmark. The main reason for the trip was Legoland in Billund, but we managed to visit one other destination, too.

The trip began on Monday with an early afternoon flight to Copenhagen airport. Boys are getting better to entertain themselves while at the airports or in the planes, so it was mostly really easy flight. We picked up our car from the airport and started driving towards Billund — about 300 kilometers west from Copenhagen.

Driving with a manual car is taxing after six years of owning cars with automatic transmissions. We got to Billund without any hitches, though. Tuesday and Wednesday were reserved for Legoland visits. The first day was spent in walking around the amusement park and trying out various rides. I was surprised how similar all Legolands are. We’ve now visited all of them (that are open), and there is only fraction of details that change. I was expecting the motherpark to be bigger, but nope, it was like all the others.

Still, Legolands are fun. Kid-friendly rides, Miniland, and some Lego shopping goodness. I ended up buying only a few boxes this time. The weather for nice on Tuesday and pretty horrible on Wednesday — raining almost all the day. Fortunately we didn’t end up going on Thursday, because the rain like quadrupled from Wednesday. Instead, we drove to Århus — an unforgettable experience in that storm.

We decided to visit some place else than Copenhagen, as we’ve been there already. At the end, we didn’t know where to go and for some reason picked up Århus. It felt like a mistake on Thursday, as it was raining cats and dogs, our hotel room was not yet ready, and there was no major perks in the city. The crux was boys behaving badly during our short shopping excursion. It felt really grand to be a parent.

Friday was a better day, weather-wise and otherwise. The city was found to be quite pleasant, there was a lot of small and nice boutiques, and everybody behaved well. We bough some Danish design, clothing, and more Legos — they were on sale. At the end of the day, we visited ARoS Århus Kunstmuseum — an hour well spent. The permanent collections featured only local — and thus unknown — artists, but there were a couple of really thought-provoking exhibitions: Get Lost by Fredrik Raddum and 101. There is also a nice “Your Rainbow Panorama” walking platform at the top of the museum, with nice views around the city and the surroundings.

To celebrate a perfect day, I and Aapo picked up some sushi to go.

The last day, Saturday, was a travel day. We checked out around ten in the morning, and drove to Copenhagen airport to return the car and check in on our flight. Then we had around five hours to burn. Burger King, shopping, and generic hassling around the airport consumed the hours, and finally we were on board of the aircraft. Flight was again uneventful and both boys were able to say awake until we were at home around 23:30. The next morning was a bit slow for all of us.

The previous weekend was midsummer, and we spent it at my parents’ cottage — very typical Finnish behaviour. The weather was quite bad the few days before the weekend, so we were pondering on whether we should go or not almost to the last minute. Fortunately we decided to go, as the weather was really pleasant. Not blazing hot, but not too cold, either.

Aapo and Niilo enjoyed the company of their cousins and spend most of the time outside. Sauna was in heavy use, and they splashed a lot in the lake. Aapo learned to climb to a tree and other practical countryside skills.

While the kids were playing together, I and Sanna could socialise, read books, and relax. Very different experience compared to our typical holidays.

After coming back, Aapo fell promptly ill, and now I’m trying to work from home with varying success.

A week has been passed since we returned from New York, and finally I’ve got enough time to sit down and write about experiences… This rare event is due to me sitting in Linda Line boat on its way to Tallinn. There is no WLAN or 3G here, so I can focus on offline items only.

We left Helsinki on Tuesday afternoon. Sanna and the boys checked us in while I was parking, and we met at the security control. Helsinki-Vantaa seems to be an exception and provide good customer service, as typically every traveller has to be present even in baggage drop desks. The security check was also very swift, and soon we found ourselves in the stores.

The only queue worth mentioning was in passport control, it took almost three minutes to get to the counter. Since my last visit, the non-Schengen area of the airport has been completely renovated, and there were a number of luxury good shops and a couple decent cafés. Would we been travelling without kids, we could have visited Finnair Spa that had several saunas, a small pool, and other items rarely found on airports. Instead, I got a good tour of the facility. Nobody was there — I hope that I’ll be able to travel again before they shut it down due to low usage.

The flight was eventless, and the entry to the USA was the typical hassle. There was a lot of quite new TV sets looping a marketing video with smiling Americans welcoming us to the States. Very disneyesque and in stark contrast with the official procedure going under the TVs. Maybe you should try to fix the procedure and focus less on commercials. It felt cheesy and absurd.

And now, back to our normal programme. After the passport control and the customs, we spent like 45 minutes in taxi queue. While driving to the hotel, Niilo threw up in the taxi on our way to the Times Square and our hotel… Fortunately, the driver was kind enough not to ask more money for cleaning after my hefty tip. While Sanna was washing the kids, I spurted to nearby grocery store for, well, groceries and sushi.

The next morning was an early one. After like three hours of cartoons — thank God for 24h cartoon channels — the breakfast was served. Time was like 7.00. I had purchases a breakfast or parking package, and thus we had an excellent breakfast buffet every morning. I gained at least a kilo of weight with the generous help from Doubletree.

The first full day, Wednesday, was spent mostly on shopping. We wandered from the Times Square a few blocks south, then walked to the 5th Avenue and continued it towards north until we reached the southern tip of the Central Park. Then to California Pizza Kitchen for late lunch and to Bloomingdales to buy more luggage. For some odd reason, we’ve found NYC Bloomingdales the easiest place to buy new luggage, this time we purchased a cabin sized Victorinox trolley.

Boys were quite tired already, so we took metro back to hotel, and spent the rest of the night recovering.

Thursday was a museum day, we ventures to the National Museum of Natural History, and waited it to open doors in the Central Park. For 90 minutes or so, fortunately we found a good playground to kill the time.

The museum was really nice, but it was filled with schoolkids. I’ve never noticed how much noise a few classes of American children can (and will) generate. Some exhibit halls were just unbearable. The teachers were participating in all that noise, not hushing anyone. Weird.

Then we popped over to Columbus Circle to visit a bookstore and a couple of other shops. More grocery sushi, and again we were good to go. The last stop for Thursday was Toys’R'Us at the Times Square. This trip was just to survey the offerings. Boys didn’t get the idea, but at the end nothing was bought.

We started Friday by visiting the Highline Park — a really fresh way to make a park in an urban settings. An old railroad running above streets has been converted into a park. Really nice place with good views! Highly recommended.

Friday’s shopping was done in SoHo. We found Apple Store with some games on the second floor as a good base station for our travels. Sanna and I took turns with the boys while other was shopping. I found decent salmiac from Dean&Deluca’s!

Then we popped over to the Union Square to visit Taco Bell. For some odd reason, I really like their food. Nobody else in the family does, but they tolerate it once a trip. Boys started to be quite tired, so we bought some sushi and rode to the hotel with the metro. Spending an hour in the hotel room made wonders, and we strolled around the Times Square for a while.

On Saturday we visited the roof of the Rockefeller Center. The views from the 67 floor were awesome and there were practically no queues. We bought also a couple of Lego boxes from Lego’s flagship store, one new Nintendo DS game, and other paraphernalia. The day was also Sanna’s birthday, so we had an excellent lunch at Bistro Moderne.

I had found a couple of comic books (Alan Moore’s) and a pair of good jeans at the Union Square, but decided not to buy them. That felt like a mistake on Saturday, so we headed back to the square to purchase them, and then travelled two metro stops north to visit a couple of department stores. The last stop for the day was Burger King. Or two stops, the first BK didn’t sell any kids’ meals so we ventured a few blocks down.

Sunday was the last day of the trip and dedicated to MoMA. After arrival, we had a nasty surprise as the museum didn’t let scooters in or wouldn’t store them either. The staff was friendly, but could not provide any reasoning for their new policy — that was not stated in their web pages or on the doors next to other sanctions. Of course, there were nobody authorised to make any exceptions. I should’ve asked whether there was someone with enough credentials to get somebody authorised to come to work. It is really infuriating that people cannot take any responsibility or make any decisions on their own in the USA. Probably they are afraid of being sacked — in a museum!

Anyhow, Sanna complained about the policy while I left the scooter on the street. A museum staff member showed us a box where we could hide the scooter, so I picked it up again and stored it inside the museum, breaking their new unannounced policy. There was another family in the same situation. It is mindboggling that the museum a) does not support ecological mode of transport, b) does not provide a shelter for the scooters — in fact policy specifically states that the scooter are not to be stored in museum premises, c) cannot provide any explanation whatsoever why the policy does exist, and d) explicitly has forbidden its staff to provide any information about anything outside of the museum.

The works of art somewhat lost their magic after the incident, and I found myself looking at the walls: Picasso, Picasso, Miro, Picasso, Dalí, etc. No feelings whatsoever. Maybe it is time to move on from modern art?

After the museum trip we took a taxi back to the airport — nobody threw up this time, and had surprisingly easy check-in and security check process. We had more than three hours to kill at the airport. That has mostly nothing. Nintendo DS and books came to rescue, and we had a delicious meal at the local McD.

The plane trip was good. The boys dozed off almost immediately and woke up in Helsinki. I get a few hours by myself, too. The plane arrived at time, we got the bags swiftly, and then I drove to work — Sanna continued home to have a day off with the boys.

As I’ve stated earlier, we are going to visit New York for a few days. Everything is now set up; bags are packed, tickets are printed, plans have been made, and check-ins could not be completed. I don’t know why — I’ve got a gut feeling that it is related to booking an American Airlines flight flown by Finnair — but we cannot check-in using finnair.fi. Everything went smoothly and the check-in process asked dozens of questions about our destination, passport numbers and what-not, and then failed at the last step.

So, tomorrow we need to leave an hour earlier than we planned. Fortunately, everything except one tiny offer is done work-wise. I need to crunch through that first thing in tomorrow, and then do final adjustments to our travel gear.

I’m quite thrilled about going to New York. It has been almost three years since our last trip, and the city has always had a special place in my heart. The trip should be good.

We — the Kalliola family — are taking a long awaited trip to New York in a week. Or then not, if the ash situation will be magnified to similar scale as one year ago. The previous long haul trip was cancelled due to me being sick, so the trend is worrisome. The trip to Chicago this spring does not count, because Sanna and boys were not there with me.

If ash clouds permit, we will spend six nights in New York, mostly focusing on shopping, visiting museums, and eating well. Should be fun. We’ll see whether we are going to make it or not.

We, the Kalliola family, spent extended Easter holidays in Taivalkoski. The raison d’être was baptism of Sanna’s younger brother’s daughter, really heartwarming celebration of a new family member.

We also visited two skiing resorts near Taivalkoski: Iso-Syöte in Pudasjärvi and Ruka in Kuusamo. There were no snow to speak of on the ground, but the resorts were well prepared and almost all slopes were open and all lifts were operating. There were surprisingly lot of people, too.

The weather was warm and sunny, so the surface snow on the slopes melted quickly into slush and the skiing conditions deteriorated quickly. We hit the slopes early in the morning and got three to four hours of decent ski time. The boys spent most of their time with snowboards on Iso-Syöte and then Aapo promptly got sick. So, I and Sanna had a rare opportunity to ski together without anyone hassling around. It was surprisingly nice experience.

When we got back to Espoo, the temperature was at least +15C and I felt awkward hauling ski-bags around.

I visited yesterday Hattuvaara village in Ilomantsi, the easternmost town in Finland — some 100 kilometers east from Joensuu. The village lies next to Russian border and happens to be also the easternmost location in the continental EU. Cyprus might be still further east, but let’s not count it in, as it is an island.

Anyhow, I was there consulting the local entrepreneurs about tourism, social media, and community building. It was a different assignment compared to my daily grind, but it was surprisingly refreshing and thought-provoking also for me.

While riding in the car there (and not driving), I could enjoy the scenery. A lot of wilderness, not that much of people. I’ve born and lived my first 19 years in the same region, but maybe 150 kilometers to west. It was simultaneously very familiar, but still also exotic experience — a lot of old battle fields and war memorabilie, Orthodox churches and Russian sounding names for places.

Hotel GreenStar is a certified eco-friendly hotel in the center of Joensuu. They’ve paid attention to electricity and water consumption, including automatically turning off lights, led lighting, sensor-based heating, optimised usage patterns, and so forth. The hotel is also fully automated, you can check in and out using a computer on the lobby. This was precious to me, as I arrived so late that the reception was already closed and I could leave swiftly without queueing to be served.

The room was big enough for three people, two single beds and an armchair bed. There was a big LCD tv, a fridge, a toilet with shower, and a working space in the room. Nothing else, so it was kinda bare. The Internet connection was included in the room price (65€ per night is a bargain) and worked like a charm.

I didn’t notice anything special regarding eco-friendliness, but that is probably a good thing as the place was quite comfy. The only thing missing was a hair blower, but I could cope without that. People with long hair might disagree.

www.greenstar.fi, Torikatu 16, Joensuu, Finland, +358 10 423 9390