Home improvement, Finnish theme dinner and luxury tapas

Happy Friday! On Fridays we usually tell you about our week, and as usual we are busy. This week, in addition to work and training, there has been a lot of fix with both houseboat and motorhome. In addition, we have had two really luxurious dinners!

DIY - with a houseboat and motorhome

There has been a lot of DIY for us, mainly with the houseboat, but also with the motorhome. Things have to be maintained! For the houseboat, we bought a new sofa bed from Ikea. The name of the sofa is "Friheten", and it felt very right for a houseboat with the name "Freedom". It took a long evening of crafting to put it together, but we finally did!

The motorhome has been serviced, and Peter has also fixed the grey water drain, which was leaking a bit. It's always something!

Finnish 5-course dinner

At the end of last week, we were invited to a promotional dinner with a Finnish theme. It was a 5-course Finnish menu at the Bar Nîmes restaurant, which normally serves French/Italian food. It was a nice and tasty dinner, and exciting with the Finnish theme!

Even before the meal, we were offered a Finnish "lonkero" (Hartwall Orignal Longdrink). The meal then began with crêpes vonnassiennes with salmon tartar and Finnish roe. Wow, so good!

The next dish we were served was classic vorschmack, which is a Finnish and Eastern European dish, made from minced meat and served with pickled cucumber and pickled beetroot.

Then it was time for an Italian pasta dish, inspired by Finnish chef Jyrki Sukula.

We then continued with pike perch á la Mannerheim, which included horseradish, mushrooms and white wine sauce.

The dinner ended with 'pain perdu', or French toast in more common parlance, accompanied by the Queen's jam.

What a dinner! Very good and well prepared! It's almost a shame that Bar Nîmes doesn't usually serve Finnish food, although their French-Italian food is certainly good too. If you are keen to try good Finnish food, we can tell you that restaurant Hejm in Vaasa has a good reputation - not too far for those who live close by. Umeå.

Tapas with friends

For us, the food gluttony was not over after the Finnish dinner. A few days later, we met our friends Lennart and Beata for tapas at their home. Lots of good stuff!

Meet with one of our guest writers

This week we also managed to organise a meeting with one of our guest writers, Anna Nilsson Spets, who lives in Belgium, but made a short visit to Sweden. Very nice! We had so much to talk about that we forgot to take a photo, but don't miss her lovely reports, from near and far, which you can find by clicking on her name!

Best this week

Best this week? It feels really good that we have started to get both the houseboat and the motorhome in order. We are also happy that we have continued with the training, because yes, between these luxury days we have weekdays with jogging or training sessions on the lower deck. In addition, it is nice that it still been nice weather, almost all week!

Your turn ... what has been the best part of your week?

The week ahead

We are currently preparing for Senior Fair in Stockholm which will be held 3-5 October at Stockholmsmässan in Älvsjö. We will be there with a stand and two lectures (on Finland and Åland). Maybe we'll see you there? If you buy ticket via this link you can get a discount (100 SEK instead of 160 SEK).

Here at FREEDOMtravel there will also be reports about cities in Norrland and about the houseboat, and probably a guest article. Now we take the opportunity to wish Happy Friday!

Did you miss the last Happy Friday? Read the Houseboat fix, finally training and lots of work!