We spent 2 excellent weeks in Mexico visiting my family. With the new member of the family in tow we didn’t do a lot of tourism so I do not have that many “publishable” pictures this time, but below you can find some.
The rest, as usual, in the set.
One of my favourite books growing up was an illustrated introduction to Greek history and mythology, with photographs of the most important archaeological sites. In 11 years living in Europe I hadn’t had a chance to visit Greece until now. It was too short and a history buff like me will have to return.
The story in pictures (more here, as usual).
One of the challenges I’ve had in explaining the security situation in certain parts of Mexico to some of my friends and colleagues has simply been the fact that people don’t necessarily understand the size of the country.
Now, courtesy of ifitweremyhome.com, I found this excellent map superimposing Mexico on top of Europe to prove my point. Just as people going to the beaches of Greece and Turkey didn’t need to worry about the Glasgow airport bombers, it makes little sense to worry about the security situation in the northern border if you’re going to the beaches of central and southern Mexico. I certainly won’t, and I go there every year (If you need tips, I wrote a small guide some time ago).
That’s what drives me crazy sometimes about the international news coverage of the country. I’m not telling you that there aren’t places that are screwed up, but using that brush for the whole place is misleading.
I had visited Argentina before in 2004-05 (during their summer) and had a chance to do so again recently. This time I didn’t have the opportunity to stay in Buenos Aires, beautiful city as it is, but was in the province of Córdoba for work. The people have always treated me well (even if someone did remark I speak like somebody from TV due to my accent :P), the food is wonderful and the landscapes of such a varied country are very beautiful.
Pictures are more eloquent than words, so some below (more here).
Rally has a huge tradition (and traction) in Córdoba as you can gather from the ads below (1, 2).
Visited Sardinia for work. Beautiful, sunny place with a climate and landscape pretty similar to that of the coast of Sonora in spring (heresy, you’ll say).
It had been a while since I had been to Italy, which was the first country I visited in Europe back in the summer of 1997. Funny how I see certain bits of their behaviour with Finnish eyes now, even if I still speak something resembling Italian and can communicate with them.
We spent a week in Saariselkä for holiday and attended a wedding there. A very welcome break in a beautiful landscape with great company.
Six years ago I worked on a project very closely with my Portuguese colleagues and was impressed by their mix of Iberian flair and European pragmatism. That project also took me to Lisbon for the second time (the first was interrailing back in the day) to one of my favourite cities in the world. It had been a while but work again took me to Portugal, and again it was an experience.
Visited London for work. While still a little chilly, at least it looks like the first bits of spring are starting to arrive there.
One of those things that always make me wonder is how in this day and age, we can work very closely with people we don’t meet in real life. We can learn to know them, and share a lot of experiences together without being in the same place or knowing how they look. Then, when we finally meet them, we realise we already knew them.