Naantali-fail
Today we decided to hop a bus to the nearby island of Naantali, which is meant to be a happening summer hotspot with beaches, nature parks, an amusement park for Moomin (the creepiest children’s characters ever… if you’ve never heard of them, see this), a beautiful old town, a harbour, etcetera. It all sounded pretty good to us, so we made our way into the centre of town this morning and got some local transit passes, and headed out.
The bus ride to Naantali took about a half hour from the centre of town. When we arrived, we were really wondering if we were in the right place, because the bus let us off in the middle of a residential neighbourhood and there didn’t seem to be any other tourists around. But okay, we grabbed a map and set out for the harbour, determined to find signs of life on the island.
What we’d not realized — and probably should have — was that most kids in Finland went back to school this week, so last weekend marked the unofficial end of the Finnish summer holidays. Naantali being a summer spot was winding down for the season, and in the middle of a Thursday afternoon, there was practically nobody around.
We walked up and down the harbour, found an almost deserted beach that might’ve been nice in hotter, sunnier weather, and spent some time amusing ourselves at a park that had self-serve gym equipment for adults in these installation-type things. Pretty cool. We then headed over to the Old Town and browsed in a few of the souvenir shops, but it was really odd. You could tell that Naantali would be quite the happening place in the middle of summer. But it just seemed really creepy all empty, like something out of a zombie movie or Village of the Damned. The brightly painted wooden houses in the Old Town should’ve been picturesque, but with practically nobody in the streets, they were just eerie. Especially since it seems like most of the owners have a habit of putting Moomin dolls in the front windows. The Moomin eyes were watching us.
Anyway, needless to say, after an hour or so, we decided to head back to Turku. Oh well, nothing ventured nothing gained, right? We’d been spectacularly lucky so far this trip with things to see and do, so we’ll just chalk this up as a bit of an odd detour and move on, shall we?
The rest of the afternoon was spent in somewhat motivated fashion (Alex and Catherine, who decided to go for a run) and in really lazy fashion (me, who didn’t). We’re all a bit tired today, so we’ve slowed the pace quite a bit.
Dinner and singing boat cruise
We decided to do something a little different tonight for dinner, and opted to splash out on a boat cruise aboard the steamship s/s Ukkopekka, a 1930s-era steamship. The cruise, which departed from Turku’s harbourfront, took us to the teeny-tiny island of Loistokari in the nearby archipelago. It was full of tourists like us, a few dozen conference participants from around the Nordic countries. We had drinks and hors d’oeuvres on board, and they made an enormous buffet on the island when we arrived and served main courses there. All kinds of fish, salads, meats, you name it.
The day had been cloudy and overcast, but it cleared up just enough so that we got to see a spectacular sunset on the island. We’d dressed up in our finery (or, backpacking approximation thereof), which of course was not at all weather-appropriate since it’s *finally* cooled down to lovely chilly temperatures, so they provided us these enormous green jackets to wear on the island. Mine came in particularly handy since I’d accidentally knocked over an entire beer all over my clothes on board. Yes, klutzy Sari is back. Oh well, the food was abundant, the scenery was amazing, and when we got back on the boat, we had dessert accompanied by a massive Finnish singalong. Yes, it was horribly cheesy, but also kinda awesome as people danced around the deck and we stumbled through the Finnish songbook and chimed in on folk songs that luckily had lots of “la-la-la” parts.
We docked around eleven and then headed up the river to another boat — the Aussie bar — for more beers. I suspect in Turku, if you’re not on a boat of some sort, you’re sort of missing the point. The river is gorgeous all lit up at night, and we had a great time enjoying our penultimate night of the trip.