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 […]
Finland
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: There is a special monument there of a fat policeman called the Toripolliisi. The Finnish Eurovision band Blind Channel are from there. It’s in the north of Finland. It has a beautiful famous island called Hailuoto nearby which must be visited. […]
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 […]
FINLAND 100 EDITION: Rovaniemi, Lapland
HAPPY 100TH BIRTHDAY FINLAND!!! In honour of this historic day, today we shall go back a year to the last trip of 2016, when I spent a blissful three days in Rovaniemi, Lapland with my parents and aunt and uncles. Not necessarily your obvious first choice for travel company, but my family are suitably eccentric […]