The day following our first hike we took an extended weekend off from work — Monday was the French National Day — and visited Tomi’s family’s summer house on the island in Viljolahti, about a 22-kilometer drive and 10-minute boat ride away. The lake’s water level was so low that we had to row to the island instead of taking the usual motorboat. There wasn’t much to do on the island, other than heat the sauna, bath, dip in the lake, and then have dinner, fried perch fillets Tomi’s father had caught earlier.

The next day did not start with a run but an early rowing expedition to check fish traps before it got too hot,  and release any fish we found. We did not find the traps on our first attempt, but had to call Tomi’s father to get better directions — “go straight” really did not make much sense on the lake. It turned out we had looked for the traps at a completely wrong places.  Eventually, we found the traps and a big pike, a couple of perches, and several small vendaces, all but one alive. 

The first thing we did when back on the mainland was to order a new fridge for the summer house. We had a lot of problems with the 30-year-old fridge: the inside temperature was +14°C when we got there, but after we put in our very cold food, the temperature stayed between +18 and 20°C.  For a longer stay, that would have been insufferable, if not a disaster.

One day Tomi’s parents took us for buffet lunch at restaurant Kaks Ruusua (“Two Roses”) in Varkaus. The weekly menu was fixed: in addition to the salad and soup bar, that day they were supposed to have three mains dishes: fish balls, pork cutlets, and a vegetarian dish. We did not find the vegetarian one but instead another fish dish. For condiments they had tzatziki and surprisingly sweet chili sauce.

We drove to Varkaus early to explore the historic old town before the lunch. The main structures were the paper mill;  Konsti, a former paper mill school, nowadays the museum center exhibiting industrial history, culture, and arts of Varkaus; the main church; the villas of important personalities related to the paper mill industry; the worker quarters; and the art center Väinölä (the yellow building with the daisy).

I guess this has been all I had to say about our vacation in Finland. Next posts are going to be about the return trip: first the flight from Helsinki to Pisa and a couple of nights there, the train trip to Genova and a couple of nights there as well, and finally train trips to Torino and Chambéry, and finally to Grenoble.