Along the Finnish coast

For some reason one rarely hears about Finland as a travel destination, this land of a thousand lakes which after all is situated so close. We decided to travel there!

As always when planning a trip, it is hard to know which roads to take, which places should you visit? With the benefit of hindsight, it is possible that we chose the wrong route. Or is there really a right or wrong way when you are on an expedition to experience a country you have never visited before?

First stop in Turku

We began by taking the ferry from Kapellskär to Turku to start our trip in this beautiful city. Turku is Finland's oldest city and its former capital. It is also the second-largest city after Helsinki. This was truly a city we liked, furthermore in full summer bloom with all the green spaces full of life. However, we made a slight mistake in coming here over the Midsummer weekend when most things were closed, otherwise Turku is known for its many museums and good pubs. Now we had to content ourselves with strolling around the streets and squares, and making a plan to visit the city again on another occasion. Because isn't it often the case at the beginning of a journey that you can hardly wait to move on and see what is around the next corner.

A museum I heard about just before we went to Turku is Ett Hem, a turn-of-the-century bourgeois home furnished in the style of the period from a wealthy family's own collections. Ett Hem is centrally located in Turku in a beautiful old yellow wooden building and is open almost daily during the summer, except during the Midsummer weekend when unfortunately… While you're in the neighbourhood, you can also pop into the cathedral.

The most famous building in Turku is probably the castle, or rather the fortress dating back to the 13th century. Over the centuries, the castle has served as a residence for, among others, Gustav Vasa's son, John III, but primarily for the kingdom's soldiers. During harder times, the castle has also been a grain store, a prison and a court of law. Quite a rich history, then.

Since Turku is a coastal city, there is also an archipelago here which we had heard was beautiful. We therefore headed out towards the many islands that are linked together into a long coastal route with bridges and ferries. However, this has to be said to be the greenest archipelago tour we have been on. The road rarely ran along the water, but rather through the middle of the islands, which at times made it difficult to realise that you were really out in the archipelago. Here and there, though, the water peeked through and we came to a small archipelago village such as cozy Nauvo, where we stopped at Köpmans, a nice restaurant in the yellow house you see below. We drove around the archipelago for two days and stayed at the very tip of a headland on the island of Houtskär. Here can you read more about the campervan site in Houtskär.

Wooden town of Rauma

Next stop northbound was the beautiful old wooden town of Rauma. The town was granted its town rights in the 15th century, making it Finland's third oldest town. The weather was not really on our side this day, so the photos are perhaps a bit grey, but you get a sense of the beautiful old houses and all the richly decorated gateways anyway.

The Old Town of Rauma is designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site as the largest and best-preserved wooden town in the Nordic countries. Miraculously, they have managed to escape the devastating fires that old towns have often fallen victim to. The most recent town fire took place during the 17th century, and since then the town has been rebuilt and has flourished. The Old Town still has a vibrant centre with shops and cafes, and the majority of the roughly 600 old wooden houses are today in private ownership.

Onwards to Vaasa

After a good night's sleep at the charming campsite Poroholma From Rauma we headed towards the university city of Vaasa. We were only here for the day but managed to stroll around the beautiful city. There are plenty of statues, art and stately buildings here. There are also a number of interesting museums worth visiting, including the Finnish Library Museum and the Old Vaasa Museum, which is about what the city looked like before the great fire in the mid-19th century.

Vill du hellre se natur kan du bege dig ut i Kvarkens skärgård som är Finlands enda naturobjekt på UNESCOs världsarvslista. Och ja, det är samma Kvarken som du har hört om på Sjörapporten på radio. Äntligen har vi rett ut vart Kvarken ligger. Jag gissar att det inte bara är jag som har hört detta på radion ända sedan barnsben och alltid undrat vart platsen med detta underliga namn ligger. Här har du det. 🙂

Surely no one has missed the fact that we like our coffee and cake, and as eleven o'clock coffee time approached, it was high time to hunt down the town's best cake. Just guess if we outdid ourselves this time, just look below at how particularly one Rendahl looks very pleased. In an old pharmacy near Vaasa Cathedral, we found Pharmacy House. They have an abundance of meringue cakes and other delicious treats, so we can really recommend a visit there.

Oulu

At last the sun came out as we drove towards the summer city of Oulu. 2026 is a truly exciting year for the city, which is both a European Capital of Culture and named one of the world's top 25 travel destinations by National Geographic. So head for Oulu!

We parked down at the harbour and came straight into the cosy quarter of old boat-houses which today contain various kinds of shops, including a nice tea and coffee merchant that we found. Right nearby is also the large square where the big bronze policeman keeps an eye on visitors. The sculpture is actually a tribute to the special market police who for almost 100 years kept order in the town's busy market square trade. Today, the jovial policeman is a popular selfie spot.

If you've developed a taste for wooden towns after visiting Rauma, you can walk across the large footbridge to Oulu's old wooden town, which is situated on an island. Here you will find a large collection of buildings from recent centuries, housing both homes and old industries. Among other things, there is a maritime museum in one of the area's oldest buildings.

Oulu is otherwise the city that every year hosts the Air Guitar World Championships. This unusual competition takes place in the late summer so unfortunately we missed this one. On the subject of ”odd competitions”, Finland seems to be the country where it all happens. Apart from the Air Guitar World Championships, you can also compete in the Tree Hugging World Championships or why not the Wife Carrying World Championships?

To be sure, both of us are easily overcome by a competitive spirit, but on this day we chose some rather more tranquil activities instead and popped into Oulu Cathedral, a beautiful and somewhat unusual church with incredibly colourful windows. This brought our sunny day in Oulu to a close and we continued our trip north towards Rovaniemi where we were going to meet Santa Claus, more about that in a coming post.

All things considered, what did we think of our trip to Finland, then?

As I mentioned at the beginning, we didn't really know which route to choose and it therefore felt quite natural to take the coastal road, because water is always lovely, after all. Looking back, however, we have realised that perhaps we should have taken the inland route after all. It was nice to see all those towns and especially fun to see the cosy wooden towns, but along the roads there wasn't all that much to see. For example, there were practically no roads that ran alongside the water. Finland is renowned for its areas with countless lakes, anyway, and the next trip to Finland will simply have to go through the interior along winding roads with mirror-like lakes on both sides of the road.