Voyage en Finlande

Introduction

A contest : “I wish I was in Finland”, was organized by the Finnish tourist board VisitFinland.com.

The theme was “I wish I was in Finland” and participants had to send a picture in order to get in the contest. User votes (almost) did the rest, as a final draw was made between the 10 finalists.
Last summer, I made a picture of my nefew on a beach in Oléron (a french island). He gazes at the sea, lost in his thoughts. He seems melancholic, so the picture was perfect for this contest. Just so you know, he was just one year and a half when I took the picture, he’s so cute, and he always is happy (so not at all sad as one could think seeing the picture). But anyway, I imagine he really could have wished he was in Finland :-)

Just a few days after the end of the contest, I receive a mail from Lea Ololube from VisitFinland.com, telling me I’m the lucky winner of this great contest, and so that I’m going to go to Finland with the person of my choice, when I want to in 2010, to experience one of the three proposed themes : “Wild and Free”, “Silence Please”, or “Urban Beat”.
I had to read the email some times over to be sure I wasn’t dreaming. I called my girlfriend (that I would logically choose to accompany me), and whe was actually so overwhelmed that she was crying on the phone. And it’s understandable : the trip for two was valued for up to €6000 !
In just a word, un-be-lie-va-ble. A contest with a incredible price, and I win it. Just too darn difficult to believe it before really being there.

The theme was very easy for me to choose : Wild and Free. I wanted to live something different, and in my imagination Finland is still synonymous with winter, husky sleighs, reindeers, and of course with Santa-Claus :-)

Many emails with Lea followed to organize our fabulous trip. After looking for lots of informations about the country, I wrote down many ideas about what to do, what to see. Then I realised the luck I had to have won this prize.
Here goes the story of a week spent dreaming.

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Saturday 04/03/2010

Beginning of our dream-trip.
As soon as we heard we had won the trip, we can’t stop searching on the internet for informations about the country : its activities, the best time to go, and other useful tips. And now we’re there !
We get up quite early (5h30) to go take the plane. No other choice than taxi… That’s life.

Check-in, and here comes our first good news : welcome to Finland, we give you a free entrance to the Air France lounge. And there, all the comfort we need : real breakfast that we needed so much, newspapers and magazines. I had never entered a lounge, and I can say it’s a real luxury. It totally changed the early stage of our journey. Good way to start things. We’re not even airborn that we already feel welcomed to Finland.

Once in the air, we try to sleep when a hostess comes to wake us up.


Are we the lucky winners of the contest ? Yes… A “little” welcome gift : a bottle of Champagne and a chocolate box. We feel overwhelmed and we almost want to shed a tear. Once again a great surprise that shows us we’re going to have the best time in Finland. A bottle for two while flying… We prefer waiting before drinking it. It’s the first time I’ve been flying with a bottle of Champagne between me and my girlfriend :-)
It’s all the more amusing that we thought bringing Champagne to Lea too, to thank her for all her time and planning? I just hope she would not come to think that we just gave her the very same bottle we were offered in flight :-)
One again, from the very start we felt treated like kings, and that we were going to have a great time.

Connection to Helsinki, direction Kittilä this time. In the heart of Lapland !
There, a chauffeur is waiting for us to bring us to our first hotel, in the Levi ski resort. And not in a taxi, it’s a minibus that we’ll be in, and just for us both. The driver does not speak one single word of English, so that won’t ease communication :-)

A common bedroom to begin with, in the hotel Sirkantähti, and our first cultural surprise : a sauna in the bathroom ! We’ll learn that all the hotel rooms are equipped like that, for ou greatest contentment. It’s not just a legend, sauna is a real tradition here in Finland. And to respect traditions, I take a cold-water shower in the middle of the sauna bath… I was not going to run and cover my self with snow as I would have had to cross a parking first, in order to get to the actual snow :-p

For dinner we have a reservation in a traditional Lappish restaurant : The Old Crazy reindeer (Kammi Hullu Poro in Finnish), where we can eat… reindeer meat.



The restaurant is quite typical, in a big Lappish kota (a tepee, carpetted with reindeer skins, where it’s usually very dark, but where you feel at home in an instant).
Lucky for us a waiter guides us in English about the evening events, because we would have been a little lost without that. We seem to be the only foreigners in the restaurant that evening, and we understand it’s really a traditional place. I like it more when I can be like a native and not just remain as a simple tourist…
The dishes are prepared in big pots, placed around a wooden fire in the middle of the room. Everybody has to go and take what they want to eat in the pots. If you’re hungry that’s perfect, and that was my case !
It’s good and quite ample. I eat too much as usual, but that’s needed to fight the cold outside. Well I have to admit it’s the end of winter and the temperature is quite hot, so yes I must have eaten too much ;-)
Going out of the restaurant we’re amazed to see that the sun is still shining. We believed we would only have few hours of light during our stay, but in april the sun already sets late : from 9pm to 10pm ! And it rises very early too : around 6am. So the full-light days are not so far away. We always hear about darkness during winter in Lapland, but where there is a bad side there is also a bright one : in summer, you have plenty of light !

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Sunday 04/04/2010

Transfer to another ski resort : Ylläs.

To begin the day : snowshoeing in the forest. We get the snowshoes on, and away we go into the wild with our guide, a little 22 Finnish girl : Heidi.
She does not really know where to go, and we go here and there without much goal, we walk around, come back… An early sunday, she doesn’t seem to be enjoying the ride so much. But she always keeps smiling so she tries not showing her eagerness to finish the walk.

The forest is beautiful, but sadly the trees have lost their snow cover about a month before our arrival. It must be magnificent to see all the branches bend under the weight of the snow, and a world of white. It’s decided, when we’ll come back it will be sooner during the season, at the beginning of march : to get enough daylight and all the power of the Lappish winter at the same time.

What amuses me is that our guide is always falling through the snow, up to the knee or worse, and that Sandra and me a lot less than her. That may be because her snowshoes are smaller than ours, but she should know better… Once, to cross a small stream I and Sandra put our sticks in the middle of the water and put a foot on each side or it, not to fall… And I had to rescue the guide who had almost disappeared. I almost burst out laughing.



The walk was nonetheless very nice, even if I would have liked to be able to walk more, and get to a real vantage point and not just go around the forest without goal.
It seemed to me that for an activity named “silence on snowshoes” we made quite a racket. Knowing that, it was no surprise we didn’t see and animal : they would have fled from us a long time before we could have seen any.

For lunch, we had a voucher for a buffet lunch in the ski resort.
At first, we believe today’s restaurant is in fact 10km from here, but actually we have tried to use tomorrow’s voucher. Minutes of small fright, but we can caml our appetite soon enough, after having found someone willing to talk to us in English. The first persons we tried to talk to looked at us as if we were some kind of aliens, without even saying a word to answer. A little disconcerting…

For the afternoon, downhill skiing ! I’m all the more happy that I didn’t yet have the chance to go skiing this year.



We rend all that’s needed (shoes, skis, poles and a ski lift card) and get to have some fun on the slopes. The ski resort is very small compared to what I’m used to in France, but the slopes and the snow are good, and we ski for three hours so we don’t really have time to get bored at doing the same path over and over.
The daylight still being there late, it’s up to 7pm that we hurtle down the hill.

I’ll repeat myself but that’s ok : We all hear about the dark side of the northern countries. Entire weeks or months when the sun does not come up at all or practically not. But where there is a bad side, there usually is a bright one. And Finnish Lapland is no exception : in summer, the sun won’t set during around two months ! We are now in april so we’re not there yet, but days are already a lot longer than what we can experience in France for instance : here the sun now gets up at around 6am, and sets at around 9pm. Not bad to have 15 full hours of daylight as of april, when in Paris you only have 13 hours and a half. One hour and a half less… And that’s just the beginning of spring.
I wanted to go to the other side of the ski resort at around 5pm, but when I arrived at the only lift that allowed to go there, I found out it just closed some minutes ago. The main lifts closing around 7pm, I found it odd not to be able to go on the other side after 5pm… Something I didn’t grasp maybe.
The afternoon was quite intense, and the three non-stop hours were highly used.
Another fun part, the guy from the shop where we rented the skis believed we had rented everything for a full week, and he was nonplussed to see us coming back so soon. The voucher didn’t stipulate anything about the duration of the rent…

After so much physical activity, we move in our chalet. But impossible to find it at first. We wandered in the neighborhood with our heavy suitcases, and then gave up and went to eat with our skiing clothes.
After dinner we asked for help at the reception, and they helped us get our suitcases there, by car this time. It was a lot farther than we imagined at first, and without a car it would have been a real pain to get there.
In fact, all visitors in Lapland have a car : his own, or a rental one. Hotels do not have anything planned to get client’s suitcases to their rooms, and for us without locomotion it’s a problem. Indeed we had to walk quite long distances carrying our stuff. And to make things worse, melting snow and ice didn’t allow suitcases to roll on the floor.

Exhausted by this day, we finally enter our chalet, which is cozy and charming. Big wooden logs make up the walls, everything is made of wood, and we totally feel the mountain spirit.
The first room was common, but here we are in high quality and comfort.

Our hotel for two nights : Äkäshotelli.




A bath in the sauna is of course highly needed.

–~~~~~~~~~~~~–

Monday 04/05/2010

We begin the day at 9:30am at the reception desk, where our new guide, Marko, comes to pick us up. He takes us close for a departure with snowmobiles, in direction of a Husky farm.
We are equiped with shoes, jumpsuit (above our ski clothes !), hood, helmet and fur-lined gloves. We weren’t cold, but now we are very hot.

We have some 20 kilometers to cover with the snomobile, and it takes us about 45 minutes to get there. highest speed : almost 65km/h ! But rather 40 km/h as a cruising speed.
Sandra and me were somewhat anxious at first when we first took the snowmobile, but driving such a beast is actually pretty easy : you don’t even have to change gears. The only thing is to hold the handlebar well because the snowmobile goes anywhere it wants otherwise :-)



It’s a very noisy vehicle, and we keep on smelling the gaz of the bike that precedes us, but otherwise it’s a very fun mean of transportation. I think about the poor skiers along the road, who must be annoyed by the sound and the pollution we make…
We’ll pass through a frozen lake too. It’s impressive to think we are in the middle of a lake, when we can’t spot any difference with the terrain we were just on only seconds before.

Once we have covered all the kilometers, we arrive through a small path to the awaited Husky farm, the well-know sleigh dogs. They have scented us, and are waiting with eagerness for the departure. It’s understandable, because we are the first customers of the day !



We start almost in a hurry. From the very beginning we feel like being on a cloud, so light and like flying. The dogs are just in front of us, easily pulling the sleigh with an amazing grace. The driver even have to brake.
The path we follow is sadly only 3 kilometers long, and it’s over very soon. It’s almost without realizing what we were experiencing that we have to get off the sleigh. The ride was magical, but way too short. I am already dreaming of spending some days with the Huskies, doing a safari in the middle of nowhere…

After the ride and many pictures with the dogs (those from the sleigh and others from the farm), we all gather in a traditional kota around a fire, to enjoy a hot drink. The room is nice, dark but cozy like all kotas I’ve been in, and we understand that when it’s minus 30°C outside people might like to find shelter here.
We stay there talking around the fire with our guide and the sleigh driver, while I grill a sausage :-)




On the way back Sandra will try with much success to drive the snowmobile, leaving me some time to admire the sceneries, and we then finish our safari where we started it.
On last thing I have to say about the snowmobiles : it’s thumb-killer, as the gas button must be pushed all the time in order to move forwards… While time passes, pain gets more vivid.


We have two hours to have lunch, that’s a little too much knowing there’s not much to do around there, but we cope.
Food, still not the very best, will fill our stomachs for the afternoon to come. It’s the lack of fruits that surprises us the most.

Ylläs ski resort si the highest of all Finland. When you think it’s just 750 meters high, it makes you think !

Snow Village
Around 2pm, we set off for our second activity of the day : visit of a Ice hotel (Ice hotel), totally made of… snow and ice (there was a trap there yes :-) ).
Upon arrival, a second guide joins the first one to make us visit the hotel. And we’re very lucky, because the guy works here all winter long, and is one of the workers who constructed the place. He therefore has many anecdotes to tell us. Some of them about the construction techniques of the rooms, others about less than commendable stories of some of the clients. This has been a real booster for our visit, because we got the behind-the-scenes of all the hotel.






It’s amusing because this person is not Finnish but Swiss, from the Zermatt region. I learned that because I told him about another place I’d been to with inside a glacier : The Jungfrau. He then told me he was actually from over there.

The hotel is a lot bigger from the inside than what it seems on the outside. It’ll take us more than 2 hours to cover it all, and I bring many pictures back from it.
It was a very fun and impressive place to visit.

Back to the hotel (the real one this time), in the same restaurant where we’re almost alone. So little activity, we’re happy to change hotel the following day just to switch buffet :-)

Our day ends with a sauna bath, that relaxes us after so many emotions/
We go to bed early, tomorrow we have to get up at dawn (5:30am) for a transfer to Rovaniemi.

–~~~~~~~~~~~~–

Tuesday 04/06/2010

We get up early once more (5h30) because we are to be transferred to Rovaniemi, two hours from here by road, and we have a safari that starts at 9h30.
Breakfast at these hours is not easy to eat, but people from the hotel nicely made us a starter-kit so we wouldn’t leave without eating first.
Taxi is on time, as usual in Finland. So punctual that we arrive an hour early to our destination, and we have to wait and look for a place to spend this hour.
Punctuality is one of the positive aspects of the country. Finnish people seem to never be late, and for us French and Spanish it seems quite impossible, as in our countries people never arrive on time to a meeting. For me it’s very important to be on time : it’s a show of respect for the others, so it’s a point I really appreciated about Finland.

On the starting blocks for our day safari : the Santa-Claus’ Safari !



We are joined by two Spanish families, and we start our safari on snowmobiles, which we now maneuver so well :-) But this time the majority of the way will be on a frozen river… Well not so frozen any more ! The three bikes got stuck in the middle of the river in 20 or 30 centimeters of a mix of snow and water. I have to say we were a little anxious that the ice beneath us would break or something… The guide came to help each one of us one after the other, getting the snowmobiles out of the plight by himself. Then for the rest of the trail we went through big ponds of water in the middle of the river. A little bit frightening ! The way of doing it : go fast and do not go slower to avoid getting stuck.



To add to our concerns, I saw, the same evening, people that were taking out all the poles that led the way on the frozen river. This showing that the way was not so safe anymore, and that it was better not to venture on the ice. That was close !

We arrive at the reindeers farm. It’s big enough, and we see many reindeers. There are up to a hundred I think.
We’re welcomed by a traditionally-suited character. He looks typical if you exclude his Gucci glasses that add a touch of anachronism in the picture :-)




We’re off for a little tour, two on each sled pulled by a reindeer. The ride is very short, finished in not even 5 minutes, and it’s very fun to see how the reindeer gallops as if his life depended on it. It’s not like a sleigh dog, and it cannot be reasonned with. Luckily we had another sleigh in front of us that was not going so quickly, and it forced ours to go much slower. Otherwise he could have knocked us over in a curve :-p We did another round, still as funny. But not like the Huskies the day before, we wouldn’t have wanted to spend a whole day on a sleigh with the reindeers. More time that’s for sure, but not a whole day. The animal throws some snow on your face and it’s not very comfortable.


After the mini-sled-ride we’re to witness a tourists-oriented “ceremony”, which will be fun mostly for children, and they then give us a Reindeer driver certificate. The little touch that reminds us who the activity is aimed at :-)



Back to our starting point through the same way we came earlier, still with the same wonders about the thickness of the ice below. But I drive the last snowmobile so I can see where the ones before are having a hard time, and it allows me to avoid most traps of water. I think about the poor ones that will go on the same path the following days if they keep on using them. The two families with the children must have been even less in peace than us I imagine.

After that : direction the Santa Claus village.
On internet, it seemed to me as being an amusement parc… but not at all (there also is such an amusement parc, but we were not going there).
We have lunch, because unger is getting stronger. Small disappointment : not started, no dessert, just a main course with no election : meatballs and mashed potatoes. It’s just good, but in small quantity. But we’re treated to coffee, so what is there to complain about :-)
We then enter a corridor that I believed to lead to the first attraction… But we emerge in a room where each one in turn can get filmed and photographed with Santa Claus. It lasts 2 or 3 minutes, and you have to proceed directly to checkout. It’s forbidden to take any picture, because otherwise they wouldn’t sell anything. Having to pay 25€ for a small-sized picture seems unthinkable. So we left without the picture, despite how the “elf” was pressuring us to buy pictures, video, USB key, … Not very nice.
We get out, and have an hour before having to go back. Fine, until we realise there’s nothing do to except shopping : one souvenir shop, two, three… Only souvenir shops, and nothing else.
I wouldn’t recommend visiting this place, even if you’re with children. It’s a place made only for tourists, and I didn’t find anything worth coming for.

Back to the hotel : Sky hotel Ounasvaara.
I forgot my tripod I don’t really know where, and the other group of tourists found it, lucky for me. It’s going to make some people smile, because I have a tendancy to forget my things lately :-) In short, no bones broken, my tripod is awaiting me at the reception desk.
Our chalet is 300 meters from there, and as we still do not have a car it’s too far for us by foot, avoiding ponds of water and snow, carrying our heavy suitcases. A Reindeer sled would have been swell right at this moment :-)
It’s understandable there’s no carrier because the vast majority of tourists have a mean of transportation, but
for us it’s lacking so we have to bear the way.



But once we get to the chalet, an excellent awaits us once more. It’s huge, great and gorgeous and new, with all necessary comfort to be living there. A family of 7 persons could live there without any problem. There’s even a storey. And not to spoil anything, it’s well decorated. There’s even a big fireplace, and lots of logs to use it. In short, a real pleasure to stay here ! We’re set to stay there two nights, and we already wish it was more :-D

Finally, off to have dinner.
In the restaurant, we learn that only few weeks ago the place got listed as the best restaurant in all Lapland, ranking 22 in all Finland.



The view is great, and the dishes exquisite. We sometimes found food to be somewhat common, and we change radically our opinion, in the most pleasant way. It’s true that it’s one of the finest restaurants in the country and it does not represent the majority of the country’s food, but let’s not spoil the moment !
Maybe we found food to be common before because we ate in places mostly visited by English and Dutch people, therefore food being adapted to their habits… And we finally hardly ate Finnish food until now.

It’s now time to light a fire in the chimney and to set the sauna on. We’re all about traditions :-)

–~~~~~~~~~~~~–

Wednesday 04/07/2010

Breakfast is in the same panoramic room we had dinner last night, meaning in the great restaurant with the gorgeous view around. I’m making myself a magnificent waffle :-)
We leave in the morning with a new guide for the day to visit the Ranua zoo, the northernmost zoo in the world as is stated in the brochure. It’s located 80 kilometers from Rovaniemi, meaning less than an hour by car.

Our day guide is Heikki. He reminds us of Hurley in the tv series Lost. He’s a little overweight, laughs all the time, and is most pleasant. We got along right from the start. It’s to be noted that all guides from Lapland Safaris were nice and professional.

Zoo program : lynx, snow fox, polar bear, owls, and many other animals, some of them never seen before.



It’s really nice to be able to see thses animals in their arctic habitat. To see a polar bear in France is quite sad I think, as here, with a real arctic scenery and winter and all, we’re closer to what they can live when they’re free.



The guide tells us many stories about the animals, and we overwhelm him with question about Finland, habits of Finnish people, etc…

For once we’re here right on time to see something : the borwn bear that was sleeping the whole winter just woke up few weeks ago, and we can see it move in its big pen. It’s a good surprise because we were disappointed to arrive too late to see the northern lights (we couldn’t mostly because of the clouds that were omnipresent the whole week), and some weeks too late to see the snow on the trees.
This bear was nice enough to wake up for us, just to console us ;-)
The visit of the zoo will take some hours to complete, because we take our time and have a good look at each animal.

After lunch on site, we get back to Rovaniemi. There, the guide leaves us in the city center so we can do a little shopping.
Aside from the most expensive shops, we encounter a kind of “souvenir supermarket” in the mall, where everything is half price compared to what we have seen up to now. It’s time to buy ! Because when I say “half-price”, it means reasonable : things are rather expensive around here…

We wanted to return to the hotel by bus. We ask people which one we should take to get the hotel (famous in the region), but no one knows. We get thrown away by two bus drivers consecutively, and we decide after 45 minutes of asking and waiting that it may be better for us to take a cab. 10 euros, not too bad, but the hotel is very close so in the end that’s not so cheap… But some might say : if it’s so close, why didn’t we go by foot ? Well by foot it would have taken us 45 minutes, with a hill to climb.

Dinner in the same good restaurant Ounasvaara. This time I choose to order by the menu. It’s good, very good ! This restaurant is highly recommended, even if it’s not cheap. Thanks again to VisitFinland.com who offered us this experience among everything else.

At night I try once again to light a fire, but still no luck.



Looking for dry wood so that the fire would start more easily, I went out with my pajamas, falling in the snow through up to one meter of it… I went inside real quick… empty-handed without any small wood.
I don’t know if it’s the wood that burns badly, the chimney that exhales poorly, or if it’s me who’s too dumb to do it, but after many thoughts I have to say the first or the second explanations should be the cause of it ;-)

–~~~~~~~~~~~~–

Thursday 04/08/2010

First things first : check-out from our palace. It’s sad but it must be done.
While leaving we understand that the chalet is owned by a family who rents it through the hotel. This would explain the nice decoration and the fact all those appliances.

Today we’re doing cross-country skiing. A small Corean girl joins us for some sport in the neighboring forests.



Sandra never experienced this kind of ski before, and as for me it’s been some years ago. But fortunately habits come back easy and I don’t fall, even while going downhill (which is a miracle :-) ). Both girls don’t have the same luck and they see the ground from much closer than me, quite often.



We get the most of our last winter activity, in the the misty forest of the morning which reveals itself bit by bit as the day gets over the fog. It allowed us to make beautiful pictures and to go through a more mysterious atmosphere.

We love that sport that allows to get through the forest whithout a noise, calmly and everyone at his own pace. Downhill ski is certainly more likely to give you an adrenaline rush, but cross-country skiing is a nice alternative, and much easier for beginners. It’s an excellent sport for health, because it makes all the body work, as well as the heart, without applying stress on the legs nor the back ( as jogging does).



Finland is the perfect country to practice this activity, because it’s very flat and very snowy up north. It’s easy to understand that this kind of ski is a real tradition here !



In the middle of the activity we gather in a kota to drink hot berry juice. A small kota lost in the wilderness, in which we make a fire that will heat us up. Very nice.

After lunch, we visit the Arktikum. A museum in Rovaniemi about Lappish culture, Lapland in general, northern lights, etc…
This museum is very interesting and we’ll need some hours to see it all. It’s not so big, but there are many things to see and learn, and it’s well presented so we are eager to read it all and see all of it.
Indeed, between pictures, mock-ups, videos and workshops, everyone should find something worth looking for. A museum that’s not to miss if you’re going in the region.

After having bought more souvenirs (and for me a Finnish knife from the famous Lappish Martiini brand), we leave for the capital Helsinki. And we arrive with clouds over our heads, as we’re used to.
Upon arrival, I’m surprised to find the harbour still mostly frozen. The ice is not very anymore, but nevertheless, I thought we wouldn’t find any trace of winter in Helsinki.

We are dropped in the Glo hotel, one of the very best hotels in Helsinki. It’s a very luxurious hotel, our room is vast, well decorated and pleasant, and we even have slippers for when we get out of the shower.
As we check-in they give us a bag full of gifts, city maps and brochures. One again, we feel treated like kings.
For dinner we have a reservation in a very small restaurant not far from the hotel.
Kuurna is the name of the place. It’s not very enticing from the outside, and when inside you get why it’s highly recommended to have a reservation. It’s very small.
The menu is on the other hand very enticing, and the dishes are excellent. It’s a very nice place to know in Helsinki. With our dinner we’ll choose to drink a Pinot Gris, so exquisite that the bottle didn’t last long between us two.
One more we want to thank Lea from VisitFinland.com for what whe organised for us.

After this tasty dinner, back to the hotel for a well deserved sleep, so that we can shoot off our last day at top speed.

–~~~~~~~~~~~~–

Friday 04/09/2010

We wake up like early risers. We want to make the most of this last day, and we feel we’ll never be able to visit everything. For a reason, as the city is vast and there are many many things to see.




As I said, Lea gave us many brochures guiding us in the city, and we choose one of those that seem to suit our needs perfectly : 7 visits by foot of the city. To begin, we go for a 6 kilometers walk in the south side. There is a lot to see architecturally speaking, and we particularly like the Jugend style. We never heard of it before, and it’s a quaint style that gives cachet to the city. At each corner we’re surprised by a frontage, by decorations, doors made up of rock, towers like ones from fortified castles, … The walk will prove much longer than what was planned for, and we go back to the hotel quite tired already.

But no time to be lazy, another upbeat of this trip is close : we have lunch with Mervi Holmen, director of VisitFinland.com, Lea Ololube who took care of organising everything for us, and two journalists (Miia Saarinen and a photographer) who want to interview us to write an article for a Finnish newspaper : Ilta-Sonomat. We became suddenly very famous in Finland :-)
Lunch is to take place at 11h30 in a good restaurant of Helsinki : the Strindberg. Why change our high class habits :-)
It’s very nice to finally meet Lea with whom I wrote so many emails in order to prepare this trop, and who had so many attentions for us.
The mood is relaxed, the journalist asks us many things : about our respective jobs, our hobbies, our previous trips, our feelings about the trip we just did, … We’re not used to that but it all goes smoothly and we answer all the questions she asks us. Even during the shooting with the photographer that we do after lunch on one of the most famous public squares in the city : The “Market Square”. I offer them to use one of the many pictures I did during the past week, but timing is not so good as they want to publish the article very soon.

For the afternoon we go again by foot, this time on the north side of the city. We forgot to take a picture of us with Lea and Mervi so we decide to go to the VistFinland.com headquarters, which is not so close but we’re going this side of town anyway. When we arrive there Mervi is already gone, but Lea is still there so wa can make that picture we wanted. We take the opportunity to thank her once again for all those memories we’ll be taking home.
The place they work in is highly colored, vast, and it must be a real pleasure to work there.
We launch once again an assault and go visit the city, for some more hours walking.




On the way we see other nice things, and among them a church made of rock and wood, very peculiar. From the outside it does not seem much, but once inside we are impressed buy the architecture. Furthermore we are lucky to witness the rehearsal of an orchestra to play the same evening. A young gifted boy was playing the violin, impressive. The brochure tell us that this church is well known for its acoustics, and many concerts are organized here.


We return to the hotel exhausted, but our journey is not over yet. For dinner, our restaurant is simply one in the top ten best restaurants in Finland : the Kosmos.

We’ll be eating a meat like I’ve not eaten much during my life ! The expression “it melts in your mouth” found its real definition that night. And because it’s typical of Finland, I chose to eat reindeer filet, soooo good. It was quite an evening, topped by a bottle of Château neuf du Pape E. Guigal which I politely won’t say tell the price :-s
We were the youngest ones in the restaurant, that will give an idea about the grade of this place.
After this magnificent dinner we have a meeting for our last Finnish experience, in a lounge bar specialised in cocktails : the A21, two minutes from the Kosmos.
Comfy and nice atmosphere, delicious cocktails with a vast selection to choose from. I’ll take two, “Finnish style”, both of them perfectly done… And then we decide to get back, even if I would have prefered to stay a little bit longer and try more cocktails, enjoy some more our last nights in Helsinki… But to be drinking cocktails alone is a lot less fun :-p
While leaving, I meet the boss who was waiting for our arrival : hearing that we’re leaving instead of arriving he’s quite disappointed because he wanted to make a presentation of the place and let us taste the best cocktails of the bar. Given he was disappointed, I was too :-p But anyway we could enjoy this lounge so no harm done. The experience could have been even more fun, that’s all.


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Saturday 04/10/2010

Departure from the hotel with a chauffeur, and a flight Helsinki-Paris due at midday. Unluckily all the flights of the day were booked, and we were only able to take this one, not one later that day to visit a little more the city.
On most filghts (international, except low-cost ones), newspapers are offered to the passengers. While boarding I see the same newspaper that interviewed us the day before, so I take it in order to check the kind of newspaper it could be. I turn the pages, and big surprise ! An article, quite long, with a big picture of Sandra and me ! We have no way to understand anything that’s written, but it’s quite funny to see us like that.



They didn’t last long before publishing it… I wanted to send them pictures but didn’t have much time to do it.
Many passengers had taken the same newspaper, and I watched them closely to check that they read our article properly. After landing a Finnish guy came to us asking if we were the ones the article was talking about. I thought for an instant he wanted an autograph… I guess it’s easy to get big-headed :-p.

We would have like to go around the city in the audio-guided tour bus, that we couldn’t do the day before because of our lunch with Lea, Mervi and the journalists.
But that’s not too bad : next time we’ll have even more things to enjoy :-)

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Conclusion

I kept on using superlatives while telling about this trip, but I didn’t do this without reason. We’ve been so well treated that we didn’t know what to say, aghast as we were.
Almost everywhere people already knew we were the lucky winners, and they always had special care for us.

I could compare this trip to a rollercoaster : we took a seat, we were guided during the whole week, and we kept on having huge amount of emotions and lived great things. But like the real thing it ends so quickly, and we had to get off and get back to our normal life. We then had only one wish : to get back on !



It’s a very well organized country (as far as we’re concerned, everything was planned to perfection), where we always felt secure. I have an expensive photo equipment (Canon EOS 5D Mk2 will speak to some of you), and I never felt uneasy or anything. That’s a first because I usually hide ma camera and lenses and only take them out when I need to take a picture.
Finland is well prepared to welcome tourists, and even if some of the activities seemed a little too expensive for what they offered (we didn’t pay because we were invited, but we bought many souvenirs, we saw the restaurants’ menus and the prices of safaris different companies offer), everything was always quality-oriented and with much professionalism.
I repeat myself but we loved our trip. It was so exotic. We come back with our heads full of beautiful memories, a little sad it had to end so quickly.

We’ll have to go back there to :

  • Make a cruise on the ice-breaker Sampo.
  • See the Northern Lights.
  • See the trees plowing with snow, and experience full winter.
  • Spend a whole day with the huskies, and drive our own sleigh.
  • Keep on discovering Helsinki.

Our next visit will surely be less luxurious, but we’re eager to experience all those activies once again.

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Want to know more ?

Here are some interesting links about the country, in French and in English :

Pictures of our trip : http://photos.moraphi.com/ (when you register, add “_fi” to your nickname so I know which category I have to give you access to).

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