One thing that seemed both intriguing and feasible without a car was a trip to the famous Curral das Freiras, Nun’s Valley. What was it? A village in a valley, basically, where once upon time a group of nuns fled to escape pirates (in 1566 to be precise). Today, it is nunless but nonetheless meant […]
Mad 4 Eira
Maybe the title is a bit misleading since Eira is a part of Helsinki. The place I’m writing about today is not in Finland, even though rumours say this place too had been visited by the Vikings. A little island in the Atlantic ocean, 520km west of Morocco, first inhabited by Portuguese settlers in the […]
Admiring the skies of Sandefjord
Four months ago I published my first entry on Norway and now I decided to publish the second entry, encouraged by the fact there are new, more recent adventures to come. The previous entry was on Oslo, and now we’ll focus on the area of Sandefjord, where my friend Hannele was then living. So, continuing […]
A seagull-eye view from Oslo opera roof
Now since travel abroad is more possible, I finally made it to visit my friend Hannele in Norway a few weeks back! (True fans will remember her from entries like the Scenic routes of Phu Quoc and the Motorbike accident in Vietnam.) Here is part 1 of this brief little trip, with the magnificent city […]
Oulu day 3: Tiger palaces and Greek lighthouses
The next day was meant to be our Hailuoto day, but alas it wasn’t. We were leaving our home around 1pm, famished and ready for a new round of iced coffees from Tähtikahvila, when L, our host, came to talk to us. He asked us if we were in a hurry, which we weren’t, so […]
Oulu day 2: Stars, rapids & little flies
I love towers. I love cafes. So it wasn’t surprising that number 1 on my list of cafes was a café in a tower. Tähtitornin kahvila (“The Cafe of the Star Tower”) is built on the remains of the ancient Oulu castle, the last of which was destroyed by lightning in 1793. The tower was […]
Oulu, an introduction
What do you know of Oulu? The extent of my knowledge before going there: Further knowledge I gained about the abovementioned during our trip: So, hereby I shall tell you about the Oulu trip my friend K and I embarked on earlier this month, in three parts. We left on Friday on the 5.05am train. […]
Trampere
Tampere is becoming the second city in Finland sporting a tram! Since trams are amazing, and since we have now visited different kinds of Tampere trams two years running, here is a new post. The first trams trundled the streets of Finland (pulled by horses) at the end of the 19th century. There were trams […]
Hämeenlinna aka Texas
Hämeenlinna translates as “the Castle of Häme”, and Hämeenlinna houses Hämeen linna (“the castle of Häme”), yes with a space because in the latter the first word is the genitive of the place name (the region), whereas in the former it is a place name in its own right (the town). #lovefinnish innit So one […]
Kuopio, the world’s tummy button
So it’s 2020 and due to unforeseen circumstances, this was NOT the summer of MY EPIC ROADTRIP ACROSS THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. Instead, it was my summer of smaller roadtrips around my home country of Finland, and the revelation came to me rather late that travel around Finland still counts as travel and thus […]