Manu's trial

Last weekend was a special one. Not only because Finnish people celebrated Labor Day, in Finnish Vappu, but also because it was the first time we actually stayed overnight in Manu. Oh, almost forgotten to introduce our camper. We call him simply Manu. You might wonder how we came up with that name? I'll tell you. It was during a kite weekend with my best kiting friends, when I bought this nice, fluffy Ice Age animal. I guess you know which one I mean, the Mammoth. It was supposed to be a gift to our son Noah, but somehow it found its place in our camper and the rest is history.

Instead of celebrating traditional Vappu in one of Helsinki's beautiful parks, we decided to spend our Vappu in Hanko, the surf paradise of Southern Finland.

So we packed our things, a lot of things, and drove down to Hanko. It felt like holiday had just started. Wind, sun and warm weather. Unfortunately it turned out to be a very cold weekend.

Once we arrived, we immediately setup camp. You won't believe it but getting everything ready, including the setup of the camper's front tent, only took a few minutes. Thank you Quechua for developing such a great tent. No swearing, no relationship crisis. After a couple of pulls here and there it was standing in front of us. Simply beautiful!

The first night in the car wasn't as beautiful. Outside temperature was around +2 Celsius and we simply didn't manage to get an even temperature in our camper. In Noah's bed in the first floor it was around +17 C, where up in the penthouse we had a perfect sauna. Also the bottle of champagne we drank in the evening didn't really help our well being. So there was room for improvement for the second night. By the way, Noah slept perfect.

After a delicious breakfast, we took off for the beach. Hanko didn't disappoint. Five hours of perfect wind and sun. Both Ma and Pa returned to the camping with a big smile. Our water season was opened...hurray! This was exactly what we needed to get new energy to get through the second night. Which actually turned out to be a perfect night. Even temperature, good sleep, no headache in the morning. So we were asking ourselves, could it have been the bottle of Champagne...