Turku

After our Helsinki experience we jumped on a 2 hour train to Turku, which is a city on the southwest coast of Finland. It is the oldest town in the country and there is quite a large amount of history to explore there! We had a beautiful Airbnb quite close to the town centre and were able to see quite a bit in our 48 hours there.

Our first afternoon was spent wandering around the town - we seem to like doing this in every new city we go to. We went to the Cathedral, Porthaninpuisto park (which is next to the Old Town Square) and to the old Market Hall. As the sun goes down so early over here, that was about all we had time for.

Another beautiful Finnish sunrise on our second day - Ed never gets to see these as he likes to enjoy his 10 hours of sleep every night haha. We decided then to explore the Aboa Vetus & Ars Nova Museum . Aboa Vetus ‘Old Town’ is the ruined town quarter from the medieval period which in the 1990’s they actually found buried underground and now sits under the Rettig Palace which also houses the contemporary art musuem (Ars Nova). Long sentence there! You can walk through the old medieval street and looking through the items they discovered during their archeological excavations was really fascinating.

One of the artists works on display upstairs in the Ars Nova caught our eye and we took a couple of pictures of his stone sculptures. I believe his name was Sakari Peltola and his works of granite were really entertaining. I’ve uploaded a shot for those interested :)

We headed down to the Ferry Terminal on our last day to put our luggage in storage in preparation for our overnight trip to Stockholm. We were able to walk to the Forum Marinum which is a combination of the Turku Maritime musuem and Finnish navy museum. There was lots to see and we could of spent longer had we the time! Our final stop was the Turku Castle which has been around since the 13th century and houses a musuem which tracks the castle’s history from medieval fort to renaissance palace. We nearly had the castle to ourselves as it seems like no one wants to visit the castle in winter, in the dark at 5pm.

Our last stop before jumping on the ferry was the Seaport pub for a Guinness and meal. I highly recommend Turku as a place to visit in Finland - it was nice to get out of the usual touristy spots too. Info on the Viking Line Ferry to come!Read more