Travel 2016 – Savonlinna, Kuopio, Joroinen, Imatra, Day 13

Day 13 – Sunday 17th July (Savonlinna, Kuopio, Imatra) Moose count  = Possibly in a stew! Also, one stuffed moose (but the museum was closed)! Today was the day we had to move on again. This time we did a somewhat illogical side trip to Kuopio en route to Imatra. If you look at the…

Travel 2016 – Savonlinna, Day 12

Day 12, Saturday 16th July (Savonlinna) Moose count = does a photo of a moose count? The day started with a quick trip to the market to get supplies to have with the lörtsy for dinner, and to extact some items from the car like maps and guidebooks. The kauppatori at Savonlinna is smaller than…

Travel 2016 – Tampere, Jyvaskyla, Juva, Savonlinna, Day 11

Day 11, Friday 15th July (Tampere, Jyvaskyla, Juva, Savonlinna) Moose count = not a damn one, no moose here, why do you ask? This was another travelling day. We needed to be in Savonlinna by 16:00 at the latest so we made a reasonably early start and dragged all of our luggage back downstairs from the…

Travel 2016 – Tampere, Day 10

Day 10 – Thursday 14th July (Tampere) Moose count = not a single one! Today the weather was much improved after the storms of the previous night and for us it was all about Tampere. The apartment was in the middle of a building site (some sort of tunnel seems to be under construction, for…

Travel 2016 – Naantali, Moominworld, Ahvenisto, Tampere, Day 9

Finland 2016 – Day 9, Wednesday 13th July  (Naantali, Moominworld, Ahvenisto, Tampere) Moose count = I’ll give you three guesses! Here’s where things started to get a bit weird, at least if you were expecting the touristy stuff to continue unabated. We repacked the car, tidied up the apartment (we never did meet our host…

Travel 2016 – Turku, Day 8

Day 8, Tuesday 12th July (Turku) Moose count = still none! I started the day by going for a run, foolishly assuming I would find my way back really easily. I hadn’t thought that the river I crossed might be more complicated than it seemed, and that there could be more than one area full…

Travel 2016 – Ekenas, Raseborg Castle, Turku, Day 7

Day 7, Monday 11th July Moose count = 0, even on a plate It was time to leave Helsinki, checking out of the hotel Klaus K after one more of their excellent breakfasts. The bread alone was worth getting up for and the other offerings such as smoked vendace were also excellent! We did a…

Travel 2016 – Helsinki, Day 5

Day 5, Saturday 9th July Moose count = 1 moose fillet, 0 live moose Saturday saw a somewhat early start as we were booked on a walking tour with Happy Guide Helsinki and they were kicking off at 10:00am at the Vanha Kauppahalli. We arrived with 20 minutes to spare and so wandered into the…

Travel 2016 – Helsinki, Day 4

Day 4, Friday 8th July – Helsinki Moose = 1 bronze moose, 1 stuffed moose, 0 live moose The ferry disembarcation was quick and efficient and after a drive into the city that had us wondering where everyone was, we were in Helsinki and parking up by the hotel within 30 minutes, a fact much…

Travel 2015 – Bruges, Day 3

Monday, December 14th 2016 – Bruges Monday was “how many museums can you pack into one day” as we endeavoured to see as much as possible and coincidentally also get as much value for money as we could out of the Bruges City Card. We were woken early anyway as we’d left the window open…