Jyväskylä & Turku

Jyväskylä
By now the weather had turned really dull. Never the best way to see a new city. Having dropped off the hire car we took a wander round the centre of town. As the rain came down we dived into a bar for a beer. Weather didn't really improve so we ate in the hotel restaurant. This is something that we try not to do too often - understand why business travellers do it but there are generally better options. Scandic's fare was perfectly acceptable.

Can't say that Jyväskylä jumped out as a place to rush back to - definitely somewhere we wouldn't have been surprised to be ask "You're from London, why come here?" but we needed a convenient stopping off point before moving on to Turku.


And it meant we could get the pics to prove we´ve been here:




Turku/Åbo
Finland is a bilingual country with about 10% of the population having Swedish (Finlandssvensk) as mother tongue. So often there are two names for the same place. Some are seen more often than others. We've been to Turku before and for the same reason as our stop on this trip - to catch a ferry to Åland (Ahvenenmaa in Finnish). Friends and family will recognise at least one of us is not a morning person; so to make the 8am ferry check-in, a hotel at the terminal is a good move. The Best Western Seaport wouldn't be our 1st choice in other circumstances. Our hotel room looked very tired

Unfortunately, the bus to the harbour doesn't serve the main railway station - seems a bit odd that, but at least the tickets are valid for two hours so you can get the return journey back into town included. This was our third journey through Turku and we'd not really had a look at the town centre before. David thinks it's got a more Swedish feel, but can explain that any further.

Dinner was at another panimo - well if you've learnt the word good to make use of it. Actually its full description is panimoravintola Koulu (Brewery restaurant "School" - it's housed in an old school building).

Avoiding the queue at the bar (freshers' week students?) we went straight to the restaurant on the 1st floor. Enquiring about the beers prompted the waiter to offer ales at 6-7%+ ABV. Not really what we wanted. But the summer red (a more reasonable 4.8%) did the trick. Food wasn't bad either (pike perch with sesame crust for D, pasta with parma ham and mushrooms for A).

Given we had to be up at unearthly (for us) hour the next morning decided to head straight back to the hotel.