City visits are not the most interesting from a touristic point of view during the winter. Nevertheless, we visited a number of wintry towns in southern Finland and enjoyed the wintry aspects of city life. In this blog we describe our visit to Valamo Luostari (monastery) and the cities of Savonlina, Tampere, Turku, Ekenäs and Helsinki in December 2021.
Valamo Luostari (monastery)
The orthodox Valamo monastery is enthusiastically described in the paper Scandinavia guide by Lonely Planet, you can also spend the night there. So with reasonably high expectations we drive to Valamo and decide to stay at the hotel for a night.
We regularly use Lonely Planet's paper guides to plan our journey. They also give us direction when further developing our visits to cities or regions.
The entrance of the monastery is stylishly designed, the snow makes it even more romantic.
Unfortunately, the further set-up of the monastery is a bit disappointing, the buildings are fairly modern and the restaurant looks somewhat like accommodation.
The church is beautiful from the outside and houses impressive icons (no photos).
We decide to drive on anyway and look for a place to spend the night in our Milady in peace.
Along the way we experience another adventure with Milady, but I already described that in the previous blog.
Savonlina
We pass the town of Savonlina, the fortress is worth a visit, says our Lonely Planet. Unfortunately, the fort is closed for annual maintenance just during this period. It is lonely with the access bridge to the island turned away, so that you really can’t get on the island.
Tampere
Tuula, our Finnish friend from Helsinki, advised us to at least visit Tampere, her favorite Finnish city.
This is the Christmas season, so there is also a Christmas market in this city. It is cold and inclement weather when we visit this market, so we don’t have to stroll around here. It’s not very busy…
We continue walking through the city and find the cathedral, an impressive building beautifully situated on one of the higher places of the city.
The interior of the church is sober but stylishly decorated.
Especially the fresco paintings by Hugo Simberg impress us. The altarpiece, the garland along the gallery and especially the wounded angel are beautiful.
Later, in the Ateneum museum in Helsinki, we see more work by this artist.
We have lunch in the covered market hall, at Eurolohi, a small restaurant that only serves salmon. We eat grilled, smoked and marinated salmon, all thinly sliced and served, very tasty!
At the end of our city visit we go to the light festival in the Näsinpuisto park. The artworks are constructed from light-reflecting metal wire. They are illuminated by blacklight, which gives a particularly beautiful effect.
Turku
The city of Turku, or Åbo in Swedish, is the westernmost city in Finland. We find a parking spot on the bank of the frozen river. A passerby spots us at night and posts this photo to Facebook with the comment, “Is this Santa’s car?”
By the way, when we arrived the streets were still fairly snow-free, but that was quite different after a night’s sleep…
On the occasion of Sonja’s birthday we go out for dinner at Sergio’s, an Italian restaurant with a beautiful and refined kitchen. We enjoy the rich flavours, the beautifully laid out plates and a good Pinot Nero from Northern Italy.
Ekenäs
We travel further through the Swedish-speaking part of Finland. All signposts and other indications are bilingual. Later we learn that the entire southwestern part of Finland has Swedish as a first language, the education here is also bilingual.
In Ekenäs, Tammisaari in Finnish, there is a well-equipped campsite that is also open in winter. We actually hope that there will also be a restaurant for Christmas, but that turns out to be a vain hope. That’s why we make our own Christmas dinner.
Our camping spot on the beach of the frozen archipelago sea is beautiful.
We take beautiful walks and enjoy each other and the peace during this white Christmas.
Helsinki
Helsinki is the final stop of our Scandinavia trip. We are welcomed with open arms by Tuula, Sonja learned Italian with her in 2009 in Sienna. After that they kept in touch and the friendship remained. Once again we have a number of special days together in which we experience beautiful things and get to know each other even better.
Tuula takes us to the Ateneum museum where, in addition to Hugo Simberg, we also admire works by Van Gogh and Heis.
At Tuula’s house we teach her to play SkipBo.
Tuula has arranged for us to stay with Gunnar, the stepfather of her friend Ninna. A nice address with a good bed and a sauna and fun from Gunnar.
We celebrate a belated Christmas with an extensive meal together with Tuula, Ninna and Ynwe and Gunnar. Wonderful to enjoy the traditional Finnish dishes that our host ladies and gentlemen have prepared for us. We close the evening with a game of SkipBo.
We walk through Helsinki with Tuula and visit a number of churches.
The Orthodox Uspensky Cathedral is an imposing landmark in the city.
The Lutheran Dom Church dominates the center of the city.
Yet these two large churches do not impress us as much as the Temppeliaukio church. This church was carved out of the rock of the city in the 1960s and still offers peace and contemplation to the faithful and exceptional acoustics for concerts. We are particularly impressed by the architecture, including the copper roof.
We take the tram to our lodging address and stop on the way in Sibelius Park, the composer is from Helsinki. He is honored with a work of art.
At the end of our visit to Helsinki we visit on the advice of Gunnar, he is a Swedish former marine, the fortress island of Suomenlinna (Sveaborg in Swedish). Suomenlinna is a cultural treasure that was built in the mid-18th century when Finland was part of Sweden.
With a nice feeling about our mid-winter adventure in Scandinavia and especially about this post-Christmas period in Helsinki with dear friends in Helsinki, we say goodbye.
On December 31, 2021 at 7:30 AM we will take the ferry to Tallinn, Estonia.