Our Last Day in Finland

Our last full day in Finland would start off in Turku. After enjoying the amazing breakfast at the Skandic Julia, we would walk along the Aura River toward the Maritime Museum where we would meet up with Kari (Kalevi and Seppo’s brother) and Kari’s daughter Ilona.

We would cross the river to get a closer look of the statue of famed Finnish distance runner Paavo Nurmi.

If you have any interest in boats, the Maritime Museum is a must see stop if you are in Turku!

While I could get quite out of hand here with photographs from the museum, I will just share a couple more from a couple parts of the collection that I found particularly interesting which was the outboard motor and fishing lure collections. Having an antique Johnson and being an avid fisherman made this a very serendipitous experience.

We enjoyed a sushi lunch with Kari and Ilona before saying our goodbyes and heading out for Espoo.

In Espoo we met up with my cousins Marja and Mia. A quick backstory on our relationship, they are great-granddaughters of my great-grandfather Charles Sillanpää’s older brother Juha, making us third cousins. We had met Marja when we were in Finland two years ago, but this was our first opportunity to meet Mia as she was living in Canada during the time of our last visit.

They would take us to see the Espoo Cathedral which dates back to 1480.

After showing us around Espoo, we would stop at a local bakery that dates back to 19th century to pick up pastries to go along with coffee during a visit with their mother who is my second cousin once removed.

After coffee we would go out for dinner in Tapiola. We would have excellent conversation all along the way!

We would make it to the Airport Scandic Hotel at 11 p.m. and got to bed for what was just a long nap ahead of getting up 3 a.m. to get ready for our 6:30 a.m. flight to Paris and then homeward.

This turned out to be an outstanding journey which was made all the more special by my cousins and our friends in Finland. I hope that my recounting of our adventure has provided you a sense for how amazing a place Finland is as well as how welcoming and friendly the people are. For those with Finnish ancestry, I hope that I have provided you the motivation to add Finland to your travel bucket list!

Next time, I will be getting back to mud season adventures here in the Keweenaw! Until then, thanks for following along with us to Finland!