The first time I thought about coming to Finland was more than 10 years ago when I was watching a travel show about this beautiful country. All I can remember now is how green everything looked like and how beautiful Helsinki was. Fast forward a few years and here I am.
This is our first time in Finland, the country of Hevisaurus, and we are going to explore two places this time. First, we are going to spend a few days at the Travel House Porvoo seeing everything that this small city has to offer. And, by what we saw here in the last 24 hours here, it has lots to offer.
Monday, we head to Helsinki and we are going to stay there for a couple of days. We are not sure about what we expect from there but, we are looking forward to see what this city has to offer.
Before I finish this post, let me talk a little more about Porvoo since we came to Finland because of it.
Travel House Porvoo
Porvoo is a small scenic town less than 50 kilometers away from Finland’s capital, Helsinki. The city is on the southern coast, close to the Gulf of Finland. Porvoo is on of the six medieval towns in Finland, first mentioned as a city in texts from 14th century. The other ones are Turku, Naantali, Rauma, Vyborg and Ulvila.
From all this medieval towns, Porvoo is the second oldest in Finland, only Turku is older. But, don’t come to Porvoo expecting a really old looking city. Most of what we see around the town dates back from the 19th century. But there are lots of things to see in the old city center even though it doesn’t look that much medieval.
Nowadays, most of the tourists go around the narrow cobbled streets of Vanha Porvoo, the old town, which survived the modern times mostly intact. Pay attention while you walk around there, those cobbled stones are slippery!
This is what we did on our first afternoon here in Porvoo. Lots of walking around the old part of the city. We visited the Porvoo Cathedral and had an amazing reindeer pizza at Gabriel 1763. This is a restaurant you have to visit once you come here.
This morning, I woke up too early and decided to take my chances with the bikes Travel House Porvoo got us. But, since we have plans for guided tours of the old city center, I decided to try my lucky out of town. And, with this tiny green bike, I cycled all the way to Sikosaari, one of the islands close to where Porvoonjoki delta meets the Gulf of Finland.
Sikosaari is a beautiful place to visit. I saw squirrels, something that moved too fast but I believed it was a fox and lots of ducks. It is a beautiful green place to walk around and retreat from the city life.
Fotostrasse is visiting Porvoo as a part of Travel House Porvoo.
