Sorry for the unexpected hiatus; we've been in a remote cabin in Finland without wifi for the last few days! Let me catch you up...
We landed in Helsinki on Monday just fine. After we landed everything went very smoothly; we went from the plane to our airbnb (with a rental car!) in 40 minutes! We didn't do much that night other than dinner and grocery shopping, but we still ended up staying up past midnight since it was still light outside!! It's so hard to sleep when it's still light out!
The next morning we packed up and hit the road. We drove northeast of Helsinki about 5 hours and skirted right along the Russian border for awhile until we arrived at our lakeside cabin. We had read that spending a weekend at a cabin by the lake is how lots of Finns spend their summers so we thought we better give it a try as well!
Our cabin is really nice and cozy. It has a full kitchen and a fireplace inside. It has a smal loft where the beds are. There is also a traditional Finnish sauna attached which is pretty cool.
Our first evening we decided to take the boat out on the lake just to explore a bit. It's a row boat so we each got a chance rowing us around for awhile. We made it back to the cabin shortly before the rain started. Then we settled in and made a fire and dinner. For dinner we made some foil packets with veggies in them and chicken in mine and we set those on the hot coals and Matt also roasted some Finnish sausages. We were actually surprised how well everything turned out! Then of course I had to finish off dinner with some toasted marshmallows and Finnish chocolate I bought (couldn't find any graham crackers!).
Our cabin!
View of the lake:
Our cabin from the water:
This was taken at 10:30 PM. It never got darker than this. I even set an alarm for 2 am just to see how light it was.
We finally got to sleep despite the never ending daylight, but luckily it's pretty dark up in the loft. It also helped that around midnight the rain started again and pattered gently on the roof right above our heads all night.
The next day it rained off and on all day, so unfortunately we weren't able to do a lot outside. But we took advantage and slept in, spent time making nice meals for ourselves, and just relaxing. We made bacon and eggs for breakfast which we haven't done in awhile. We also went into the sauna for awhile which was a unique experience for me. We made the fire in the stove which heated up the rocks on top and occasionally we would pour some water on the rocks which would cause it to steam up and really made it much hotter in there. So that was fun and nice to do while it was cold and rainy out. It was incredible how hot it got in there! Then we made a fire in the main part of the house and we kept that going all day. For dinner we made our same foil dinners again, and we must be getting good because they turned out just as delicious as before!
Then today we packed up and cleaned the cabin before driving back to Helsinki. On the way we stopped in Savonlinna to see the Olavinlinna castle. We didn't pay to go all the way inside so we didn't learn a whole lot but we did walk around in the free areas which was pretty cool. It was a castle that was built to defend the Finnish borders and it was dedicated to St. Olaf.
During the rest of the drive south we experienced some strange weather. I can't tell you how many times we switched from sunny and warm to cold and rainy. Literally over 10 times at least. And it would bounce from between 11 to 3 degrees Celsius! One time we even saw some snow flakes for a brief minute! It was pretty crazy.
We made it to Helsinki in time to return our return car and then bussed downtown and checked into our airbnb. I'm excited to stay in this nice apartment for the next 5 nights! We found a really great Italian place for dinner really close to our apartment and I had some great baked spaghetti bolognese. Yum!
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