In this summer’s vacation we spent three weeks in our native country. We spent the middle week working, and for the first and the last week we planned visits to lesser known (at least to us) nature destinations both in Helsinki and in the Savonia region of Finland. We also had intention to eat as much fish as possible on our meals, both fresh and hot smoked, since it is not available in France. At least not the same quality.  Other than eating fish (and potatoes) not everything went us planned; Tei fell sick on the third day, and felt under the weather for the most of the vacation, so she did not accomplish much work but spent most of the days watching the Paris Olympics on TV. When we were ready to return to Helsinki for the final part of the trip, it was Tomi’s turn to fall sick. We still tried to do all the hikes and visits as planned.

As long as I remember there has been some sort of street/traffic construction going on in the South-Western Helsinki, and these projects usually have taken a long time to finish. And once they have been finished they have been so miserably outdated that the planning and building process has started all over again. Ad infinitum.

We stayed first three days in Helsinki in now finished new residential area of Munkkisaari, and visited also another recently finished residential area of Jätkäsaari (pictures above). On our first evening, while grocery shopping, we were surprised by a major downpour that completely flooded an intersection (also pictured above). There was no way through it with dry feet, so we had to make quite a detour.

After three days in the capital we made our traditional stop at Mänttä’s annual fine arts festival. We stayed at Art House & Sculpture Garden of a Finnish artist Pirjetta Brander. She has had her work exhibited at the Mänttä before and also multiple times and places internationally,  for example in USA, Canada, India, Germany, France, Estonia, China, Iceland, UK, Belgium, and Sweden (from her online CV). Above I have posted some photos of the artworks in Pekilo and also in the gardens of the  Serlachius Museum Gösta, and our walk to and from there.

Our next stop was in a small municipality of Kangaslampi in Savonia region, where Tomi’s parents currently live. We spent there a week and a half, mostly working but also doing a couple of interesting nature explorations. Next post: Summer Suomi (Part II).