To the archipelago via Tammisaari

After our brief visit of Helsinki, it was time to head off and explore the Finnish countryside. The plan was to head off to our summer house in Parainen, in the South-western part of Finland, making a few stops on the way.

The first stop was Tammisaari, a small town located sort of halfway between Helsinki and Parainen. It's a town I know rather well, as I spent 8 months there, during my military service. Or, I suppose it would be more accuraty to say, I know Dragsvik very well, which is where the garrison is located (I don't actually know the town of Tammisaari itself very well at all). We started off by checking out Raseborg castle. It's one of the most famous castles in Finland (which isn't saying all that much, they're not that plentiful here...), one that I remember having loved visiting as a kid. It's a castle that dates back to the 14th century - it was built by the Swedes to defend against Tallinn, a powerful Hansaic city at that tinme in history.

We didn't actually visit the castle, just admired it from the outside, and headed off to the village of Snappertuna instead. It's a kind of typical arhcipelago village, I suppose one could say. There's a sort of miniature outdoor museum showing a typical arhipelago farm. Apart from that, the 17th century church was quite interesting. The village itself is rather picteresque, as well.

We then headed into Tammisaari town centre. It's a pretty nice town actually, one of the best-preserved wooden towns in Finland. Quite a nice place to stroll around, with plenty of shops selling handicraft to keep the tourists coming. I quite liked the neoclassical stone church, dating back 1842. We decided to have lunch at a quite famous place called Knipan, a nice wooden restaurant built on top of wooden poles at the end of a wooden pier. Quite liked the traditional interior, too. The buffet lunch wasn't anytthing to write home about, though. Well at least Julie and Aurelien got to try another "must Finnish experience" - the buffet lunch.

After a short stop at Design Hill cafe (a pretty cool place in Halikko, by the Helsinki-Turku motorway, which sells Finnish design and also operates a pretty cool cafe), we continued towards Parainen and the South-western archipelago. We arrived around early evening time, welcomed by my dad. We spent the rest of the day hanging out and relaxing (our summer place is prefect for that, if I may say so), that is: sitting on the terrace (as the sun was finally out!), having a sauna, checking out the sea just down the road.

The next day, we decided to head out and explore the archipelago for a bit. So we took the car, and caught the ferry over to Nauvo (the ferries are a great way to get around in the archipelago if you are moving around by car or bike, especially as they are free!). Nauvo is a nice little archipelago town, very popular with boat people. Apart from beautiful nature, eating, and swimming there isn't that much to do actually, apart from visiting the medieval church. We had a light sandwich lunch at a charming cafe.

From Nauvo, we decided to take another ferry to the nearby island of Seili. Seili is a beautiful little island with a rather interesting history. It was known as a place leper hospital from 1619 onwards (for about 160 years). I'm not so sure hospital is the correct wording here, actually. It was more a place where lepers came to die, rather than to be taken care of. After the leper hospical shut down, the place became a mental hospital, and continued to be one until 1962.

Hard to imagine such a gloomy path in such a beautiful place. A very nice place to walk around, one of the nicest places to visit in the archipelago I reckon. The main administrative building is actually planned by Engel, even!

To round of a very nice day, dad treated us to his famous lappish salmon soup back at the summer house. Berit joined us as well for the occasion. It's basically a normal salmon soup, but with pork meat added to it. A rather surprising combination, but it actually works pretty well! I do have to admit though (I hope you don't read this dad!) , I prefer the classic salmon soup... ;-)