Tag Archives: scenery

Out and About in Helsinki

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We are staying in Espoo, home of Nokia and the second-largest city in Finland. It’s actually just an extension of Helsinki. We are staying in another Airbnb apartment and you can have a little look at it here. Nice 1 bedroom apartment on the 3rd floor of a 4-storey apartment building, bus outside the door, shops and railway station about 10 minutes walk away. We’re here for 5 nights and will put the car and ourselves on the ferry back to Stockholm on Saturday night.

We decided to go into the city and have a look around today. It was overcast this morning but the forecast was for a fine day with temps in the low 20s. That’s double the maximum temperatures we had while we were within the Arctic Circle!

So … even though there’s a bus outside the door, we walked up to the nearest railway station and dithered around for a while working out where we were headed and how much it would cost. As Espoo is in Zone 3 of the local train network it was going to cost us 4.5 euros each. So we thought it might be cheaper on the bus and headed to the nearest bus stop where we boarded a bus and paid …. 4.5 euros each. Okay, so now we have all that worked out. We’re going to Tallin, in Estonia, tomorrow for the day and we wanted to check where the ferry leaves. The ferry terminal just happens to be near an open air market that I wanted to visit, so that was all rather good planning, or luck.

The market stalls are all selling berries, currants, cherries, peas and new potatoes at the moment so we bought some little new potatoes and peas still in their pod for dinner and strawberries and raspberries as well. I was interested to see that fruit and vegetables are sold by volume here, so I bought a litre each of peas, potatoes and strawberries, and the raspberries were already in a punnet. There were also a lot of stalls selling cooked food, with little tables and chairs set up. We went to a seafood stall close to the water where Greg had whitebait, fried potatoes, vegetables and salad, and I had prawns, fried potatoes etc. All freshly cooked, all delicious.

We wandered around to the ferry terminal and collected our tickets to Tallin, then did a modified walking tour of the main points of interest in Helsinki – the Lutheran Cathedral, the National Library which is currently closed for renovation, Pohoisesplanadi – Helsinki’s equivalent of the Champs Elysee and the highlight of our walk -  Temppeliaukio Kirrko (The Church of the Rock),  a 1960s church hewn into solid rock. A really simple but magnificent space, with a glass and copper dome and a beautiful organ. Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to take any photos, but if you click on the link above there are some good photos with the Wikipedia article.

We caught a train back to the apartment, partly so that we could experience the full gamut of Helsinki public transport, but also because we couldn’t work out where the heck to catch the bus back out to the suburbs!

 

Buying fruit at the market

Buying fruit at the market

More market stalls in Helsinki

More market stalls in Helsinki

Its not a disease! The common name for Street food vans everywhere but Australia

Its not a disease! The common name for Street food vans everywhere but Australia

 

 

 

Finland, Finland, Finland …

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Aww go on, how many of you remember the Monty Python song? I recall sitting in a lecture sometime during my nursing training in the early 1980s and the guest lecturer, probably a doctor, mentioned something about Finland, and Sue Sanossian (waves to Sue if she’s reading) and I spontaneously burst into song. Do you remember that, Sal? I still giggle when I think of it.

Finland, Finland, Finland,
The country where I want to be,
Pony trekking or camping,
Or just watching TV.
Finland, Finland, Finland.
It’s the country for me.You’re so near to Russia,
So far from Japan,
Quite a long way from Cairo,
Lots of miles from Vietnam.Finland, Finland, Finland,
The country where I want to be,
Eating breakfast or dinner,
Or snack lunch in the hall.
Finland, Finland, Finland.
Finland has it all.		 You’re so sadly neglected
And often ignored,
A poor second to Belgium,
When going abroad.Finland, Finland, Finland,
The country where I quite want to be,
Your mountains so lofty,
Your treetops so tall.
Finland, Finland, Finland.
Finland has it all.Finland, Finland, Finland,
The country where I quite want to be,
Your mountains so lofty,
Your treetops so tall.
Finland, Finland, Finland.
Finland has it all.Finland has it all.

written and sung by Michael Palin

Anyway, here we are. In Finland. Lots of trees, lots of lakes and lots of mosquitoes at this time of the year. We have camped ‘in the wild’ for the last couple of nights in nice spots in forests, and last night we were near a small lake as well. Tonight is our last night before we get to Helsinki and we’re staying at Vaihelan Tila, a ‘farmstay’ hostel a couple of hundred kms north of the capital. It’s still a small working farm, but the large barn has been converted into accommodation. It’s lovely – all timber inside and sleeps around 14. There are several self-contained huts on the property as well, but tonight we’re the only ones in the large converted barn, which also has a wood-fired sauna. Our hostess told us about the various accommodation options and mentioned that her house has an electric sauna ‘and it’s not as good as a wood-fired one’. So we have had a sauna which Greg liked so much that he’s planning to have another one in the morning. I did like it but I tend not to sweat (and that’s nothing to do with ‘ladies don’t sweat’, it’s actually a nuisance as I don’t cool down easily when I’m hot).

We have been so excited to be back in a country that doesn’t require a second mortgage whenever you go shopping that we have visited at least one supermarket a day, mostly just to see what’s available. Norway is not part of the EU and the range of food available there is quite limited and more expensive than in EU countries. Here in Finland, food, fuel and accommodation are all cheaper. We still have some food that we bought in Sweden a couple of weeks ago – pasta, mashed potato, pasta sauce and a jar of beetroot (what was I thinking I would cook with that when I bought it? I have no idea) and I’m looking forward to being able to use an oven in the apartment we have organised in Helsinki, I’m a bit tired of one-pot cooking on a camp stove.

I thought I’d share a recipe that I kind of made up last night:

Mince and White Bean Hot Pot
250g mince
1 small onion, diced
tomato paste
1 can cannelini beans, drained and rinsed
1 small can corn

Fry onion in oil, margarine or butter, add mince and cook until browned. Add a couple of tablespoons tomato paste with some water and cook for a couple of minutes. Add cannelini beans and corn, cook until hot.
Note: Don’t try this at home, it probably only tastes any good when you’re camping and you’ll eat almost anything and think it tastes great.

Midnight Sun – Tromso

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Picture taken of Tromso from our hotel room at about quarter past midnight. The sun is still up but hidden behind mountains

Picture taken of Tromso from our hotel room at about quarter past midnight. The sun is still up but hidden behind mountains

Eating Rudolph - Reindeer steaks

Eating Rudolph – Reindeer steaks

We spent last night in at the Scandic Hotel in Tromso, our first night in a hotel on this trip.  It gave us a chance to hang wet washing all over our very own bathroom and walk around in bare feet without worrying about them getting cold and wet, and only unpack a couple of small clothes bags rather than half a ton of camping gear. Such a difference from last year in Portugal and Spain, where we spent every night but one in hotels or the very occasional auberge. The hotel is a few kms out of the town centre, close to the airport. It has a great view of the fjord, and looks across to ‘the mainland’ and the mountains beyond. Most of Tromso is on an island, including the town centre, the airport and the university. It connects to the mainland via a very impressive bridge.

We went out for dinner last night, to Aunegarden. It’s a cafe/restaurant in a beautiful old wooden building that spent most of its long life as a butcher’s shop. There are lots of rooms and little nooks and crannies. We were taken along hallways past a couple of other rooms that were set up for dining, to a room with 4 or 5 tables and a lot of large old photos of downtown Tromso that were probably taken early last century. The menu had lots of choices, but we were really only there for one thing … the reindeer. Anyone reading this with young children, please don’t tell them we ate one of Santa’s helpers!. It was a fillet of reindeer, served with mashed potato, red cabbage and lingonberry sauce and it was delicious! Lean, tender and not too ‘gamey’. The meal cost as much as the hotel room, but we both really enjoyed it. Best (and only) restaurant meal we’ve had in Norway.

But then! We walked around the main streets of Tromso for a while – lots of lovely old wooden buildings and interesting things to look at … got back to the car and found a parking ticket on the windscreen. For $150. Damn. I had paid for parking and mis-read the instructions. I thought it was free after 9pm, but actually the rate is reduced overnight. So I paid until 9pm, and we got the ticket at 9.30. Annoying, expensive and a good lesson to read instructions properly even if they are in another language. The worst thing about it is that the only way to pay is to do a bank transfer. I spent ages trawling the internet last night trying to find out if I could pay online with a credit card, but couldn’t find anywhere to do so. I have found out which bank is on the bank transfer details and we’ll go to the Tromso branch today and hopefully I’ll be able to make an over the counter payment.

On the bright side, we stayed up late enough to see the sun at midnight … well actually it was on the other side of the mountains, but it was definitely still there, shining.

Inside the Arctic Circle

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Our "wild" campsite on Lofoten Islands

Our “wild” camp-site on Lofoten Islands

We drove into the Arctic Circle about 15 minutes after we left the campground this morning. There’s a big tourist information centre/cafe and a small sign marking this amazing geographical fact. Amazing to us, because neither of us had ever thought we’d get to such lofty latitudes, although Greg has wanted to since he paddled his folding kayak in Iceland and Greenland 10 years ago. So we drove along for a while reminding each other that we’re inside the Arctic Circle. We were at high altitude when we crossed into The Circle and it was all quite bleak and typical high country terrain, and I noticed that the outside temperature was 6C, but when we dropped lower it all looked just like it has for the last 1000kms or so – fjords, forest, farms and little villages. And the temperature has hovered around 12 – 14C for most of the day.

When it was raining yesterday, we decided not to take the ferry out to the Lofoten Islands, even though we had read about how stunning they are and how it’s the highlight of any trip to northern Norway. It all seemed to be a bit of a waste in the rain, so we headed up the main road. Today the weather is better, and we have seen some blue sky and sunshine. At Bognes on the main road going north to Narvik, there is a ferry across to Skarberget on the main road, and there is also a ferry from the same point across to Lodingen on the Lofoten Islands. Greg initially drove to the queue for the ferry to take us across to the main road, then when we realised where the other ferry queue was going, he turned the car around so we could catch the one to Lofoten.

We’re currently sitting in our tent, surrounded by wildflowers, beside the water and overlooking some magnificent mountains. It really is breath-taking.

Artic-circle-welcome

Roadside stop for Lunch

Roadside stop for Lunch

panorama-mountains-lake

Travelling along fiords

Travelling along fiords

Waiting for the Ferry to the Lofoten Islands

Waiting for the Ferry to the Lofoten Islands

 

 

 

Just outside the Arctic Circle

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It started raining just before we started packing up the tent this morning, and it didn’t really stop raining all day. We had planned to drive the scenic route along the coast, which involved several (more) ferry rides, but it all seemed to be a bit of a waste if we weren’t actually going to see anything. So we headed back to the main (inland) highway, the E6, and headed north. The scenery along the main route is still incredible, at times going along the sides of mountains and fjords. It seems like every time we go around another bend, there’s another perfect postcard-worthy picture of green fields with assorted red, cream and yellow buildings, or a granite mountain with stripey white waterfalls running down, or fir trees growing all the way down to the deep, clear water of a fjord.

I’m really hoping it stops raining soon and we get some blue skies, but even with cloudy grey skies, this scenery is amongst the most beautiful I have ever seen. We are still driving through a combination of forest and farmland, mostly grain crops with an occasional small herd of sheep or dairy cows. It’s just at the end of the hay-making season, and occasionally we have seen fields of cut hay being dried on long racks – I guess the ground is too damp to leave it lying there as it would never dry. Today we drove through 2 really, really long tunnels. One was 5.9kms, and the other was 8.6kms. The Norwegians are incredible tunnel-builders.

The ‘free-access camping‘ we had planned to do hasn’t worked out as we thought it would. We thought we’d be able to just drive down smaller roads off the highway and find somewhere to pitch our tent for the night, but there are little villages, farms and houses just about everywhere. Last night we camped at the campground at Vennesund and enjoyed using their cosy camp kitchen. An unpowered tent site cost us $30. Tonight we’re in a cabin at Krokstrand, just 20kms south of the Arctic Circle. A few reasons for being in a cabin – an unpowered tent site here is $40 (!!), and a 2-berth cabin with fridge, hotplate, heater, table & chairs & covered verandah is $60. It took us less than a nano-second to opt for the cabin and forego putting up a wet tent on wet grass in the rain. Funny about that.

Update: 300Kr does not give you a hot shower, that’s extra 5kr (A$1) for 3 minutes.

Eating lunch at a roadside stop in the rain

Eating lunch at a roadside stop in the rain

 

Cabin

Cabin near the arctic circle