27012019

Today I had an appointment to renew my passport in the Honorary Consulate of Finland in Pilar de la Horadada. That's about an hours drive south from here. The traveling passport machine is there for the first part of the year, and as that is the nearest place for us, we drove there to get it done. I had understood some official text wrong and could have held on to my old passport year longer, but as I had already had to pay for it, I got it done today. Also I had terrible picture in my old passport so I got rid of that one year early.

The application went online to Finland. They will send bunch of passports to Madrid and the Finnish embassy in Madrid will send it to my house. I have to pick it up at the post office because it's a passport. Anyway it was very interesting visit. I have never visited an embassy nor a Honorary Consulate. The lady who was the Consulate was very nice and kindly answered my nosy questions.

As we knew we'd be in the area and very close to Parque Regional Salinas y Arenales de San Pedro del Pinatar, we had packed the dogs into the car and drove down there to see the dunes and the birds. Especially flamingos.

Dogs weren't allowed to the dunes, but we walked along the road and it was pretty nice. It's right between Mediterranean and Mar Menor (minor sea) which is the Europe's biggest salt water lagoon. There were so many people with impressive size camera lenses there to catch the bird life. 

I had real trouble choosing a picture for today. You can check out some more in Insta:

https://www.instagram.com/heidihhfin/