Fun in Finland

Well this post is a little bit late, seems I went on holiday a month ago, but I wanted to share my trip with you lovely ladies anyways.

As many of you know, I was lucky enough to travel Finland and Lapland at the beginning of June. Many ask why Finland? We decided to go to Finland as we have friends there who we studied with while we were in France, so it was an opportunity to meet up with them. I went with my two friends from university, and had a great time.

We managed to travel and discover 1158 miles of Finland in 10 days, so we definitely got around a lot! The country itself is beautiful and different to what I expected, as at the time I was unaware that 85% of the country is covered with forests, and there are 187,888 lakes in the country! I’m not going to bore you with every detail of my trip but will just share my highlights in order of their occurrence;

• Realising upon arrival that we didn’t know a single word of Finnish (we picked it up on the way).
• Paying 36 euros for a bottle of wine, and 8 euros for a cider… expensive!
• Going on a boat trip around the Islands of Helsinki and a bird pooing on my friend… cruel but funny.
• Eating street food from a market in Helsinki, and not getting food poisoning.
• Taking lots of pictures of the famous Cathedral in Turku, to then realise it was just a church.
• Eating the best burger of my life on one of the many boat bars in Turku.
• Having a bbq with a Finnish family and eating smores.
• Sharing my sleeper cabin on the night train with an old Finnish lady who kept shouting at me in Finnish.
• Staying in a log cabin with its own private sauna.
• Whitewater rafting in the Midnight Sun… unbelievably beautiful and fun!
• Trecking in the Lapland hills, unfortunately not seeing a reindeer.
• Meeting the real life Santa Claus at the Arctic Circle! (He even ho ho’d)
• Having to bribe the conductor on the night train back to Helsinki so he wouldn’t kick us off the train. Then getting off a stop too early!
• Seeing Sting perform at a festival in Helsinki.
• My boy send a bottle of champers to our hotel room to celebrate our trip.

So as you can see, I had a very busy 10 days, am crammed a lot in, but it was a once in a lifetime trip!

Where has been the most unusual and interesting country you have visited?