We started off in Turku, where most of our Finnish friends go to school. Upon a Finnish friend poll, some said that Turku was better than Helsinki, but only the ones that go to school here.
We arrived at about 8 AM to Turku, after an overnight boat trip. The first thing we see when we get to Turku is this castle. It's from the 1500's or so, and it's very long, so you can't see most of it in this picture. Almost immediately my nice camera died, so I had to use my baby Canon for most of my Turku shots.
While we walked up one of the canals, I saw some bikes that were on the river...you know, cause it was frozen.
So I unsuited (in case I fell in) and walked out on the ice to go salvage the two abandoned bikes. One of them was sporting my favorite color scheme, and both of them had locks. Too bad.
This was another old thing in Turku, possibly even older than the castle. It was a cathedral.
You can see the cathedral in the background of that picture on the left too. In that picture we climbed these icy slide-stairs to get on a hill so that we could see all of Turku. My favorite thing about these treacherous stairs was that you could slide down them excellently. I did that a couple times, but the handrails were trained to end my slide abruptly and painfully.
As we continued walking around Turku, I spotted an abandoned home behind a small group of houses across from the Old Town. I was the only one brave enough(?) to go in. There was graffiti on the walls, and it looked like they were gutting it to renovate it.
In one of the rooms I found a bunch of old Finnish money, from before they switched to euros, and a chair.
For some reason, all around Turku they had these mirrored orbs on a stick. I was a fan, and there was lots of speculation as to what they were, but we never really figured them out.
Goal 98: Go See Architecture in Helsinki
Although some of our finnish friends had tried to tell us that Helsinki was not that good, we went to check it out for the sake of one of my favorite bands. Lucky for us, everyone who discounts Helsinki is missing intelligence (or taste). Helsinki was a very cool town with lots of unique architecture. Kenny and I walked to, literally, every landmark in Helsinki in about 12 hours.
Architecture in Helsinki is as unique, creative, and funky as the band itself. I was impressed by how good everything was, and felt very good about trekking the entire city in one day. We thoroughly explored the city, and had a good time doing it too.
Before we left Helsinki, I completed another goal, 101, by sending a Helsinki postcard from Helsinki. However, I'm marking this goal for alteration, because I didn't find it notable enough to be an actual goal, but more of a lame goal.
The next days were spent in Punkalaidun, and on a boat. Punkalaidun is where our Finnish friend, Taija, is from. It's a small town, very similar to the town I grew up in. It has about 3,000 people, and is surrounded by farms.
On a side note, Punkalaidun is known in Finland for having the most beautiful town hall.
We stayed at this nice little home that has been in the family for as long as anyone can remember. It seems this is the way for most people living in the countryside.
The area was beautiful, and sported plenty of forests and open spaces. It was nice to be here and relax a bit.
This was a Finnished deer we passed by on our way to the sauna (the sauna that we spent an hour in). Every Finnish house has a sauna, and this is a definite Finnish 'Thing.'
In Punkalaidun we got the true Finnish experience with a sauna, a Finnish mother's home cooking, and we even got to play a game of Innebande (floor ball [indoor hockey]). Innebande was great fun because I was such a baller. I balled it up and down the court, and even scored a goal.
To end the trip, we got on a boat on our way back to Stockholm. We smoked a cigar, drank some cream liquor, and bought 80 € of alcohol for an upcoming party we're going to throw. I took many more pictures of all of this stuff too, but you'll have to get to my TravelPod blog to check all of those out.
Status:
No comments:
Post a Comment