Finland! From the ferry dock in Turku, we had an early morning stroll along the Aura River until we found some coffee and pastry!The Aboa Vetus (old city)Archeology Museum had huge maps of Turku’s development as well as medieval foundations discovered when building the museum. Turku has history dating from 1229 and was rebuilt after a huge fire in 1827.An hours drive in our rental car brought us into the archipelago and on the second largest Finnish island of Kimitoon. We are staying in Villa Eden for a week, next to the Merikruunu Hotel. A beautiful retreat with its own sauna and hot tub – we are ready for some tranquility.Our first morning we walked to the water…Nice!!! Norrfjärden is this inlet of the Baltic Sea.Hiking the Senatsberget trail near Dalsbruk. Our breath is taken away by the beautiful mosses, lichens, and heath on the exposed bedrock……Minature gardens……And lots of varieties of mushrooms. More than we can ever remember seeing.This area is full of ferns. But all the forests seem to us to not have a shrub (mid) layer. and the tree trunks are very straight with not many lower branches. Instead they reach for the sky.Finland hikes have strategic shelters to gather with your friends and family.Senatsberget has a real lookout tower to get a birds eye view……Of the nearby Archipelago. Feeling lucky to have such good hiking days to appreciate returning to our sauna. Very Finnish!Teijo National Park had this Jeturkasti Trail. We are standing on an ancient glacial lake shore from 9,000 BCE. There are allegedly quite a lot of these in Finland, and they have circle depressions created by our early ancestors for cold food storage.After coffee at the Nature Center, we drove to the Sahajarvi Trail in Teijo National Park. A kilometer in, we had a hand ferry to get us to a picturesque island……Perfect rock for a picnic lunch.Also in Teijo National Park-, the Nikkallio overlook — on our third hike of the day — gave us more amazing moss on bedrock with a view of the lake Hamarinjarvi.Another morning we headed to near by Vastanfjard to check out a Labyrinth – or a Nordic Maiden’s Dance Site. This was built in 1910 — potentially on a site of a more ancient one. We enjoyed walking it, looking at the moss, thinking about the rituals, and the quietness of the dawn.More bedrock with glacial striations! Mesmerized by the Baltic Sea and Archipelago National Park from nearby Sandon Beach.
