Turku in a day, especially on a Monday

We booked a late checkout at the hotel as our overnight ferry wasn’t departing until 9pm. The warm weather from Europe arrived and we were mostly in 28 degrees for the day. Turku claims to be the Finnish Paris and with a river running through the middle and with the large established street trees you can see the reference. However the marketeers have slightly exaggerated the scale somewhat. We walked around town for a while checking out a few shops then hopped on a bus to Turku Castle.

While we were walking especially first thing after the rain we kept smelling this familiar smell. We eventually worked out that the street trees were beech and they smelled like our native bush so it was very pleasant. On our walking we noticed a number of shiny chrome spheres on poles all along the streets. After some investigation we discovered they are heating release tubes to take away the moisture from the town’s central heating network.

Being a Monday the castle was closed so we wandered around the walls then popped across to the ferry terminal that was nearby to see what to expect in the evening. We decided to walk back to the famous funicular railway. It’s famous for its unreliability. It was working fine for us. It’s only about 100 metres long up a hill to the old prison which is now apartments, hotel and wellness spa. Walked back into town for a well deserved cold drink and lunch, then across the river to Luostarinmaki museum quarter for a look. Closed on Mondays - do you sense a theme?

Back to hotel for a shower and packing then spent an hour or two in a mall browsing. After a meal we hopped on the bus again with our bags and checked in to the Viking ferry. We had booked an internal cabin . We spent the first two hours on the deck watching the boat navigate the Finnish Archipelago before it was too cool to stay out. This was the first night in weeks that we hadn’t seen some light in the evening in our bedroom.
The crossing was smooth all the way. The ferry is 12 years old and kept in good order. The same stores, bars, restaurants and duty free as in the Estonia ferry last week. Duty free prices were very high. We will wait until we arrive back in Auckland if we want anything.
We got up super early to watch the ferry cruising into the Stockholm archipelago. There were some massive summer houses perched on hilltops.Read more