In August 2007 I went to Estonia, Finland, Norway, and Germany for almost 3 weeks. I planned on spending time in seeing southern Finland, taking a boat to Tallinn in Estonia, flying to northern Finland to eventually get further north to Norway for the northern most point in Europe, then finally spending some time in Frankfurt, Germany.
To get to Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, I took a high speed catamaran across the Gulf of Finland as soon as I got to Helsinki, Finland (I would get back to Finland later). The harbor in Tallinn is a short walk to the town center, or you can take a bus. I had seen pictures and it looked beautiful, in person it was incredible. Tallinn is a walled city built on a hill (Toompea) with much of the wall remaining and numerous towers all around the old town. The whole old town is cobble stoned streets and mostly pedestrian free. It's large enough to be called a city, but if you only want to remain in the old town area there is everything you need. The old town has incredible architecture, is compact, lots of park space in and around the city, friendly people, clean, relatively cheap, you name it. It is a wonderful place to go and see. The city has tram and bus service, and they use the old town as the hub, so it is easy to get around. Much is said about Prague and Budapest, but I think Tallinn is the best of both these cities combined and then some.
In Finland I was taking a 2 prong approach. I was going to see Helsinki and southern Finland, then fly up to the Arctic Circle and see northern Finland before crossing over to Norway.
For southern Finland, I only needed a couple days in Helsinki as I was there before and the remainder of the time would be driving a large loop to see a bunch of other southern towns. From Helsinki I took a sightseeing cruise through the archipelago to Porvoo, Finlands' second oldest town. It's a small town with a small old town. Leaving Helsinki I drove southwest, then up north along the west coast, and finally all the way across Finland to the east. Hanko, a beach resort town, is the southwest tip of Finland. While it's slogan is 'the sun always shines in Hanko', this wasn't the case when I was there. While the beach was beautiful and there were people swimming, it was cloudy the day I was there. Turku (the oldest town in Finland) and Hämeenlinna in the south both had large castles of note. As I drove east to Savonlinna, this drive was through The Lakelands (the lake district) with lots of wonderful scenery. Olavinlinna Castle built in 1475 is in the town of Savonlinna and is Scandinavias best preserved medieval castle. I then drove south along the Finnish and Russian border and stopped at a couple border crossings just to take pictures. Since I didn't have a VISA I could not enter (and more importantly leave) Russia.
I then flew from Helsinki to Rovaniemi, Finland and the Arctic Circle. There were a couple towns in northern Finland I wanted to see as well as the scenery, but mainly I was driving further north to eventually go into Norway. I had been to Rovaniemi and the Arctic Circle where Santa Claus' Village is before, but that was during Christmas. While in the area I managed to coordinate with my brother capturing me on the Rovaniemi and Arctic Circle webcams, these pictures are below. Driving north and being summer, there was about 20 hours of daylight a day. This was somewhat strange as you don't have the urge to stop and sleep for the night. In this location, that was to my benefit as most of what I had to do was scenery. There are only a handful of towns north of Rovaniemi and only 2 I wanted to see, Ivalo and Inari. Ivalo is the main center for northern Lapland and Inari has the SIIDA Center. The SIIDA Center hosts exhibits of the Sami people, the Saamelaismeseo (Sami Museum), the Ylä-Lapin luontokeskus (Northern Lapland Nature Center), and a 17-acre open air museum. You don't see this sort of thing everyday.
Driving further north in Finland, I eventually crossed over into Norway. My goal was to get to Nordkapp (North Cape), the furthest point north in Europe. I expected this area to be remote and people to be wearing reindeer skins and living in huts. OK, there is some of that but really it is far from it. While it was fairly remote, and the towns were small, the towns that were in this region had everything you would want. The towns had restaurants, grocery stores, banks, and the hotels were very nice with web access. As I thought about it, these people had to live up there so why wouldn't they have all the amenities? As I drove further north, the landscape changed. While it started out with a lot of tress and rolling hills, the further north it got more stark and barren. This was the Arctic. Since North Cape is at the tip of Europe, the only way I can describe it is that the land started falling away around me. Driving down (or is it up?) the road to North Cape the land kept getting narrower and narrower. The road would curve and there would be nothing but cliffs and water to my right, and the next curve would bring cliffs and water to my left. It was a very strange feeling. At North Cape they have a monument, a video you can watch, restaurant, bar, and gift shop. You just sort of wander around and take it all in.
Finally, I had the last weekend in Frankfurt as a layover. While I had flown into Frankfurt a number of times I had never spent time in the city as it was a jumping off point to other destinations. I always envisioned it as very modern, but they have a rebuilt old town that is very Germanesque. It was an easy city to get around in, both by public transport and foot. The old town and pedestrian area is all very accessible. The weekend I was there had some sort of event going on along the Main (the river running through the city). There was lots of food, events, and entertainment going on.
top
next