And this is the last post from my Finland trip: random photos captured when walking around in Helsinki.

From my Hasselblad 907x 100c with the XCD 4/28P lens. A superb combination, relatively light and portable for a 100MB, medium format camera.

And even more so if, like me, you use Peak Design Camera Clip and have the camera attached to your backpack strap.

Bear in mind you can only do this in a safe place like Finland, having this exquisite and expensive camera totally exposed to everyone’s attention.

Talking of which, walking out of a Marimekko store in downtown Helsinki, this lady looked at me and said “hey, nice camera!”. She knew her stuff.

Helsinki is a pleasant city and both my wife and myself, we miss the days we spent there.

We also miss the days in Inari. We miss the snow, we miss the comfort of our warm and light Fila down feather long coats. We miss witnessing the sudden snow fall while we were sipping our coffee, enjoying our breakfast and slow start. We miss the food, the elegance of the restaurants in downtown.

We miss the quietness of every place, the quietness of every one. We hate noisy places and noisy people, and Finland felt like the opposite of this.

We pretty much liked everything about Finland and became fans of this country. Yes, we spent a week only, but everything was just so perfect we don’t rule out returning some day in the near future.

Ultimately… Whenever we travel we always have a good time. Then when we are back to Macau, back to work, depression kicks-in.

A friend once told me the best way to overcome this depression is by scheduling immediately your next trip, your next vacation. Which is what we did already. In fact, we doubled-down on this.

Last week when we were in Thailand – a short trip less than a month since we got back from Finland, to kill the depression – we planned in detail the trip to Portugal coming September. In fact, for this trip we bought our plane tickets almost a year ago.

So we are in May and have our hotel stays booked and rental car reserved. This place we want to go – an outdoor hiking path – requires an entrance ticket. We wasted no time and got our e-tickets already.

Yes, all this for a trip in September – this is how desperate we feel.

And since we are basically all set for this September trip to Portugal, and in October my wife is going to Korea with her mother… For 2025 there is nothing else to plan and as so we are already discussing where to go in 2026.

Life is beautiful.