A trip to a...zoo.

I was first up this morning, as usual. At about 7.45am I headed to the kitchen to rev up the coffee and get my first caffeine injection of the day. The others didn't surface until after 9.00am, by which time I had already showered and had breakfast. Keith had to be woken up at nearly 10.00am- I think all the swimming he is doing is knackering him out- but he proclaimed cheerfully when he got up that he was going to swim even further today!

First stop after everyone was ready was the local zoo. Well, it calls itself a zoo, but it's really just a park with a variety of animals. Rather oddly, almost the first thing you encounter are Highland Cattle from Scotland, which we found funny last year when we were here too! After that, there are emus, ostriches, reindeer, wild boar, rabbits, lamas, horses, cats, chickens and few other things too. Not exactly a wide selection of exotic animals, but fun for children certainly. Especially when the rabbits are all on an island, and you can feed them and even pick a few of them up- which as you can imagine, is right up Olivia's street! Getting to the island can also be fun, if you take the self-service raft across from the "mainland".

On rabbit island.

Fancy some carrot?

"Can I have a kitten, dad?"

Sandy sails across to the island!

Keith enjoying seeing rabbits close up. 

Time out on stilts!

Did you not do this last year Liv? And actually, it was the same girl who led the pony too!

We had lunch back at home, and then the afternoon involved enjoying the sauna, the hot-tub and the lake, while topping up our vitamin D levels through sunbathing too. Keith spends an almost unimaginable amount of time swimming- each time he goes into the lake, he swims for up to 45 minutes or more at a time, repeatedly heading out about a couple of hundred metres, then heading back in a circular way to the jetty. He's also getting right into the sauna- he was a bit unsure of this when he came to Finland in 2010, but he really enjoys it now, and heads in on his own for a session after each swim!

Olivia and Keith swimming. 

Olivia in the hot-tub. Taken from the side of the house, with the furnace smoking away happily.

We headed to Vaajakoski late afternoon, about 10 minutes away by car, to get some food for tomorrow, when our good friends from Varkaus, Jyrki and Mari will be here, before returning for dinner and more time in the lake and the hot-tub. Anna and I sat on the jetty until after 9pm in the warmth, just watching as the sun began to dip down towards the trees on the other side of the lake. It's 10.15pm now and although the sun has gone behind the trees, it doesn't really get dark at all at the moment- I have been sitting here after midnight and it's still light.