Blogs from Finland, Europe - page 4

After breakfast, we were picked up at 10am for a visit to the Kopara Reindeer farm. It was minus 6 degrees, with a windchill of minus 9, so we wore our hired ski jumpsuits and boots. Our guide gave us a lot of information about the area and reindeer. He collected some lichen for us to feed the reindeer with. In Lapland, there are more reindeer than people (200,000 reindeer and only 180,000 people). He was of Lapis origin, rather than Finnish or a Sami (native). At the end of the tour, we were taken up to see all the huskies (both Siberian and Alaskan) in their pens. There is no snow at the moment so they are allowed out of their cages to run around for exercise. When there is snow, they get enough exercise ... read more

On Tuesday night, we stayed overnight at the Novotel at Heathrow airport so that we would be close to the terminal for our early morning flight. We were up just after 4am and the hotel taxi took us to terminal 3 at 5am for our first flight to Helsinki. We went into the Cathay Pacific lounge for some breakfast prior to our 7:30 flight. This first took almost 3 hours and we had some lovely views of southern Finland towards the end of the flight. There are a surprisingly large number of lakes and waterways in Finland. We had a transit of around 4 hours so we holed up in the Finnair lounge prior to our flight to Rovaniemi, which took 1 hr 20 mins. It gets dark in Finland around 3:30pm so we had a ... read more

Tish still needed rest to vercome her illness so Andrew headed out to Suomenlinna Island which is a UNESCO sea fort originally constructed by the Swedes when they invaded ad conquered this part of the world but as a sea fort, it was used by Russia in the 1800’s and Germany & the Soviet Union in the 1900’s. The fort is pretty much intact and there are 800 people living in the accommodations on the island which ensures buildings and structures are maintained. The stone structures including bunkers and tunnels are impressive and there is plenty of Military hardware around the islands to give the visitor an idea of life in the fort. Th most impressive structure is the dry dock which used a windmill and horse driven pump to empty the drydock after a boat ... read more

With Tish still recovering from her illness, Andrew stepped out into Helsinki by himself for the day checking out the harbours both north and south of our apartment which is located on Katajanokka, a peninsular on the east side of downtown Helsinki. There are lots of walking tours through our neighbourhood so it obviously has played a part in Helsinki’s past but the quality of apartment buildings here is second to none. Down the bottom of our street stands the Uspenskin Cathedral which has a grand viewing platform overlooking th north and south harbours. The Cathedral has an amazing dome and while compact inside, it was very busy with antiquities. The viewover the north harbour included the Helsinki Eye and a number of cruise ships and ferry’s docked for the day. There was a large market ... read more

Today was another travelling days as we moved from Copenhagen to Helsinki where we boarded our Ferry (The Princess Anastasia) to St Petersburg Russia. We packed our bags and left our Copenhagen hotel room around 10:45 am headed for Osterport train station, catching the first train to the airport. We had already checked in the night before so upon arriving at the airport we adjusted the weight in our bags to be 23 kg each and then had to print our luggage tags from a machine before dropping them off on a conveyor belt, scanning the luggage barcode and sending them on their way. Before long we were on our Finnair flight to Helsinki and 1 hour 45 minutes later we were in Helsinki airport making our way to the underground train station. We caught the ... read more