Road Trip // Part I // Finland + Sweden

Our road trip was short but yet so awesome.

Oh, where to start. We saw so many things but nothing at all. Jouni drove and drove and the landscapes just flew by. Our goal was to see as much as possible. We stopped in a couple of places but mainly spent most of the trip driving.

Since there’s so, so many photos to show, we’re going to split these into a couple of blog posts.

First up – Finland and Sweden. On Sunday, after shooting 3 sessions in Vaasa area, we started our journey up north. We mostly drove Bothnian Coast Road and found ourselves tired somewhere near Pyhäjoki. We found a lovely beach – although we didn’t know about the loveliness until next morning since it was pitch dark when we got there. We didn’t have the energy to set up the tent, having only slept a couple hours after Saturday’s wedding. I washed my face quickly with the sea water, got our sleeping bags and slept in our car. Oh yes, this whole weekend was full of awesome madness.

We woke up to the sound of seagulls and the sea. It was so peaceful. Sun wanted to shine, but it was too cloudy. We walked on the beach for a while and continued our trip.

A tip for the ladies – Kanebo Sensai Sponge Chief is an awesome companion when traveling. It makes washing your face so easy. I love the whole Sensai Silky Purifying product line and my skin has felt so good ever since I started using it. Jouni uses some of these products as well and it is like night and day.

We drove to Oulu, bought some stuff we needed (like a new tripod) and lots of unhealthy things from Pulla-Pirtti.

We stopped to eat at Merihelmi and also went a bit crazy…  Click! (make sure to have your sounds on!)

Whenever we go to Ylläs, we always stop to get all the groceries from ICA Maxi Haparanda. That’s what we did now as well. Lots of awesome Swedish goodness. Like milk that has 0,5% fat in it – it’s the world’s best milk. Aaaand you can’t get that from Finland. Sigh.

Then we took E4 and continued to E10 towards Kiruna.

We stopped to take photos of Kalixälven (The Kalix River).

It was starting to get dark and we wanted to put our tent up this time. We found this awesome little park right besides Tankomat in Lansjärv. It’s a resting area and we weren’t sure if it was OK to camp there, but didn’t find anything against it and nobody came to say anything – so we guess it was OK ;) We had some problems with the tent but managed to put it up right after some Google work (or so we thought…). It rained like crazy that night but we managed to keep ourselves dry.

On Tuesday our journey continued. It was rainy and gloomy.

We reached Kiruna after a few hours.

At this point it started to be something that we had been waiting for, landscape wise. Hills.

We started to see glimpses of the sun. Nothing wrong with rain and clouds, but it’s actually nice to get outside the car to take photos and not get wet. Although majority of the photos here are taken from a moving car. You see, road trip and all!

Just before reaching Abisko, we stopped the car (why am I saying we when it’s Jouni who does this!) and found this cool beach. It was SO WINDY. But so awesome.

Then we reached Abisko. Wowzers.

This is Silverfallet (or at least that’s what we believe it is) and for some crazy reason we thought it would be easy to wash our hair in this ice cold mountain stream. You know what they say about the crazy Finnish people… Jouni wanted to take a dip in it and it was the shortest dip I’ve ever seen. Moments later a bus load of Japanese tourists arrived at the scene. Glad they didn’t get to witness us, haha.

This has got to be one of the prettiest landscapes I’ve ever seen. Just insert bride and groom somewhere in there… Hmm. Attention! If you’re getting married in Sweden and would like to get photos taken here – just contact us ♥ Pretty please.

Soon to come, parts two and three, maybe even four! And we thought the hills couldn’t get bigger…