Not exactly Central Park

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Afew weeks ago, I realized that I did not have any plans for the weekend. I, at that point, decided to go to a random nearby town for the day. I wasn’t sure which one I wanted to go to but I thought of Porvoo. When I asked my flatmate if she was doing anything Saturday, to ask if she wanted to join me, she said that she and her friends were going to Porvoo! Talk about coincidences! So I joined them for the day. This adventure was a bit different from the rest, in that I was surrounded by Dutch language instead of the common Polish or Finnish that I hear often. It was a nice change. There were 6 of us and 4 out of the 6 spoke Dutch.
We took the 10am bus from the city center and arrived in Porvoo about an hour later. The bus stopped at the outdoor market where we walked around briefly and looked at the different wares people were selling. My favorite was the flowers. It is so great to see flowers! It just adds to the spring feeling. From there we went to the tourist information office to pick up a map of the city and see what different things there are to see. Honestly, there isn´t that much to see in Porvoo. But we made a day of it anyways. It is not about what there is to see but about who you are with and what you make of it. After the tourist shop we went to the river where there are these cool looking buildings (store houses) that Porvoo is famous for. At this point it was around noon, so we sat and ate lunch that we packed. Ah, the first picnic of the season! And our view was of these cool buildings.
After that we found two different walking tours in the guide book we picked up. The first one was more of the old town, another thing that Porvoo is famous for. They had all these old wooden buildings, some were little shops and others were houses. People actually live in them! Our tour guide was one of the girls that we randomly elected for the job, she was very good too. She lead us where to go and explained what we were seeing. It made the experience all that more fun. One of the things that we saw on this tour was an old church. Unfortunately it is under renovation. This poor church has been attacked and burned so many times. The latest was last year. I heard a story about it that 3 young guys burned it while they were drunk one night. Luckily it is a stone church so only the roof was burned. It was strange to see this frame of an old church and have no roof on it at all. Anyways, the next day these 3 guys went to the police and sat that they were the ones who burned the church! I guess it is the Finnish way, to be extremely honest. On this tour we also saw 2 different ‘parks’. They really were not parks at all though. My backyard in Minnesota is bigger than both of them combined! But they still called them parks. Not exactly your central park! Actually, I would not be surprized if central park was bigger than the whole town of Porvoo!
The second walking tour that we went on was more of the city itself. It showed us some of the older architecture as well as some of the newer architecture. There was also a small chocolate factory that was along the way. It was very small, we all could barely fit in! But once we entered the smell of chocolate was so strong we could almost taste it! It was just so nice to spend the day in the sunshine with good company and some place other than Helsinki. We ended up back at the market square where we started. We then enjoyed some ice cream while we basked in the sun a bit more. From there we took the bus back to Helsinki. It was a short day there, but it was still fun. We all ended up sleeping on the way back. I guess the sun wore us out.

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Photos

Famous Shore Houses
What's in these houses? Who knows! But they sure do look cool!

Ready, aim, shoot!
This was a common scene all day - 6 girls pulling out their camera and taking pictures of the same scene. I guess it is easier than exchanging photos later on.

The bigger 'park'
As you can see - it really wasn't a park at all! The cool thing about this 'park' was that it was named after a woman who was a pioneer in the Scandinavian feminist movement, Fredrika Runeberg.

Comments

[Katrina Wall]

Whoa
Emily that is so awesome! I wish I was there to experience this with you. I'm sad that plans for the summer fell through. I guess you'll just have to go back to Europe w/ me someday and we will explore together. Have fun and I miss you TONS!! Love ya, Katrina

[amanda0367]

Hey Emily! It looks like you are still having a blast! I hope Finland is treating you well! I am so jealous of your adventures there and wish to be back! :) I love reading your blogs!!! ---Amanda Penning