Turku

The Lonely planet website describes Turku thus

This one-time capital of Finland has a very historic feel, being the country’s oldest city. While hardly any mediaeval buildings remain, a visit to the doughty castle and superb archaeological museum will stimulate your imagination into populating the riverbanks with bustling crowds of merchants receiving and dispatching Baltic cargoes

While its guide book called it ‘intriguing’. We thus had high hopes for the place, which were sadly dashed because very little remains of Turku’s visual heritage thanks to multiple fires and so on.

However, though the town lacked the pizazz of Helsinki, it did have one unbeatable and very much unexpected attraction, since she only arrived back in the country the day before, with very little warning! Our friend Maija, sadly without her own spouse, holding onto mine for size comparison purposes

Greetings and good wishes were duly exchanged, Tiggy.

In addition to having to endure my blithering on about our trip, Maija tried manfully to impress us with Turku’s sights. Unfortunately, the cathedral is one of the grimmest buildings not built as a prison I have ever seen, thanks to narrow minded Reformationists

Small remnants of its former painted glory remain or have been uncovered

The wife of Gustav Vasa’s insane and murderous son has a pretty grave, with nineteenth century stained glass.

But all in all the poor building has been mucked about too much to ever be beautiful

Turku does have some pretty buildings, and a nice riverside, with a display of giant eider ducks from its glory days in 2011 as European City of Culture

After lunch, Maija took us to the rather splendid indoor market

Afterwards we went to the more utilitarian outdoor market which mainly sold fruit, vegetables and fruit. She then took us for a drive around the city, and then over to an island where we could enjoy a woodland walk

Sadly we probably won’t see Maija or her hubby again for years, but it was so lovely to see her again. Sorry for talking your ears off!

This was spotted at a station on the train ride back

And one last photo from Helsinki, the interior of its train station – the ticket hall

Unfortunately either something I ate for lunch, or a bug I picked up, started to give me grief on the trip back from Turku and i wasn’t recovered before we had to fly to Oslo. It’s now Saturday and I’m feeling better, but still a bit gassy and in pain, so since the weather is crap, I’ve come back to the hotel to keep quiet and post this, while Doug goes off to explore. But we went out this morning, so next post will have picture of viking ships 🙂