Finland- Tampere

After our brief visit to Turku, we hopped on a bus for a couple of hours to Tampere. 

This town is two hours north of Turku and sits between two great lakes.

It is also known for many festivals and parties. Here we didn't take may photos but, did a lot of walking around parks. visited some museums (including the ice hockey and Spy museums). We also did something we swore we wouldn't do in our year... we went to an Aussie bar! so shameful but still, the apartment we rented didn't have Wifi, and we needed to book bus tickets, on the upside we got to watch some of the ashes.  

we also had some rest days here and did a lot of nothing on these days. and discovered that Finland is great for another reason... mostly everything is closed on Sunday! and those things that were not closed (mainly restaurants and supermarkets) were only open for 3-4 hours from 12.even large chain stores like H&M were closed.  

Our main reason for visiting this time was to visit the Ice Hockey Museum. We are both missing ice hockey very much and cant wait until the NHL season starts again and to come back and watch the mustangs play next year! 

anyway... below are some of the awesome fun times we had there...

Nic at the entrance to the Ice Hockey Museum

 They also had an awesome simulator game where you try and score in a few different scenarios... it was uber fun and we spent a fair bit of time in it... lets just say we need a bit more practice :)

 Another great site in Tampere is the forest/park and the observation tower from which you can see the two lakes that surround the city
The tower is also known for their amazing cinnamon doughnuts which as very yummy, they have an extra flavour to normal doughnuts, but we couldnt quite place it... they were well worth eating though... after going up the tower, we went for a walk through the park lands and enjoyed some of what makes Finland a great place to visit.

Chilling on our walking break 

Our final lot of pictures for this town were in a park outside a church... they explain themselves... i think we may be going a little crazy with all of this travelling...not ;) 

Hello Finland!! Turku

We have finally made it to FINLAND!!!!! YAY. Nicola has been uber excited about finally making it to Finland after years of wanting to be here... thankfully this wonderful country lived up to all of her high expectations and she has had a wonderful time. We finally found a country in europe that she would move to in a heartbeat! 

The fins are a super people who are greatly different to their Scandinavian brothers and sisters that we have previously visited. whilst many are bonde haired and blue eyed and quiet when sober, loud when not, they are a lot more metal and grunge in their look and attitude... this is afterall the home of metal !!! 

So our first stop in Finland was Turku. We arrived here at about 7am after sailing overnight from stockholm. We only stayed here one night as it is quite a small town and everything is pretty close together.  We also stayed in a really cool hotel-- it was an old ship called the Bore, so we got to sleep on the water for a second night and sleep in cabins :) luckily also this was the cheapest hotel in Turku and also the closest to the ferry terminal. oh and it came with free breakfast so it really checked all of our boxes :) 

When we arrived we couldn't check-in to our room as it was too early, so we rented some amazing yellow bikes and set off to see the city 

our super cool yellow bikes

Our first stop- the Turku Cathedral                                               

We decided this looked a bit like Kermit the Frog :) 

They have a thing for flying ships in Finland 

After the Church we rode through an international market that was set up in the town and headed for one of the main art museums. this was up a MASSIVE hill. nic won the race to the top

when we got there we discovered it didnt open until 11. so we sat outside in the nice park with our books and waited for opening time.

The view down the massive hill to the river 

After we went to the art museum, we headed back to the market and ate our way through a few countries, mainly we had crepes and waffles and looked at lots of fudge and meats and foods and goods from many countries


After walking through the market and getting full of berries and Nutella, we made our way to Turku Castle.

We had a lot of fun here in the museum as well as walking through the well preserved castle.

Bec built a castle 

bec playing dress ups 

nic so tired so she decided to have a quick shut eye in the castle church we seem to be napping in a lot of church pews?? 

Sweden- Stockholm

Arriving at Stockholm at 7am in the morning by bus from Oslo. After getting to the nice studio apartment and having a nap for 5hrs we were ready to experience Sweden 

Nic out the front of the royal palace :) Super happy to be here 

View from the palace 

I had a bit of an obsession with chandeliers in this palace... there were so many and they were in EVERY room. These were just a couple of pics that i took

Stockholm's royal palace this looks alot different from the original one they had when they first settled in Stockholm. But it burnt down, sound familar??

Nic with some statues in the palaces museum actually paying attention to what we were there to see

                     And then this appeared... a lawn mower that drives itself around the lawn!!! So amazing :)

And then nic was distracted for the rest of the museum visit...

Nic more interested in the automatic lawn mower than the hundreds of years old sculptures.

Ye old mobile phone when people used a stylus ;)

Inside the royal chapel... we were buggered by this stage and took a rest (and maybe a small nap) in the pews

the next day we took a walk to the Djurgarden. Our first stop was the Vasa ship museum. Thus gigantic ship was the be the pride and joy of the Swedish kings fleet in the 1600s but he rushed the deployment and something got missed along the way. 20 minutes after she set sail she sunk to the bottom of the Stockholm harbour, taking 50 lives with her. Turns out she was far to high and wasn't compensated in width to hold her height nor the tonnes of cannons/food/drink/ammunition on board and two gusts of wind meant she toppled over. They brought her up from the bottom of the port in the 1960s and begun piecing her back together. Luckily a lot was preserved due to the mud and today we get to see the whole ship as she would have looked minus the paining as the jury is still out on exactly how she was painted. 

This is a great museum to spend a couple of hours and you need is as the museum is spread over 6 levels, all with the ship in the centre so you can see all aspects of it. Whilst you cant go in the ship one of the levels is dedicated to a recreation that you can walk through, equipped with cannons and very low ceilings.

Our next stop of the day was Skansen- a folk museum crossed with a Nordic animal zoo. This was a lot of fun to walk around. we had of course been  to the folk museum in Norway but this one had a different style of buildings and also some very stylish interiors from apartments throughout the last century in Stockholm.

view of the city

Baby reindeer

More reindeer - they have velvet looking antlers 

lynx

lynx

buffalo 

cute wolf

The Wolverine!!! though they didnt look like they were about to join in and Xmen fighting, they were still super cute fighting over a ball with food in it and trying to get the large round ball through the much smaller square hole... i knew those kindergarten learning's weren't for nothing :D

Now most people skipped most of the farm animals but they were alsoo very adorable... this cow is now my friend :) The Pigs below were also adorable as the piglets chased after their mum everywhere 

On our next day...

When in Sweden why not visit the home of IKEA and pretend to decorate our imaginary house

This chair and couch  is the comfiest chair ever even though it doesn't look like it. After seeing it here we kept seeing it around in museums and cafes for people to sit on. I think its trying to tell us something 

Sharnee we found baby scotch                     and then some kick ass superhero wall paper

                             and a mirror                                                   and some hooks :s

goodbye IKEA :( 

We also went and visited an absolute vodka exhibit as you cant visit any vodka distilleries that we could find. The exhibit showed lots of different and unusual advertising they used since the 80's.  it also had a drunkeness and  hangover simulator which was pretty life like...maybe too life like... i needed a long sit down in the grass after this as the hangover followed me out of the museum.

Nic sitting in the contemplating chair... I'm still not sure she told me the truth when she said she was contemplating Vodka when you look at the direction she is facing ;) 

On our last day in Stockholm we decided just to walk around and take photos and just immerse ourselves in the city one last time. these are some of the random photos of places we found walking around. 

gah we're lost...... not really the heat was making my cold worse lol

And then before we knew it it was time to leave this magnificent city. we took a ship from Stockholm to Turku in Finland 

Goodbye Sweden!