Europe 2015 – July 15th

We started off our second full day in Finland with some berry-picking in the forest. We’d heard that the wild berries were phenomenal so we were very excited to have this outing. Our journey to the forest was about a three minute walk through Arto and Tarja’s neighborhood.

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Here are some pictures from our foraging expedition.

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We collected lots of tiny blueberries and strawberries.

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While the berries didn’t knock our socks off, the beauty of the area and the novelty of berry-picking in the forest made for a great experience.

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Bruce and I got out for a quick bike ride around Riihimäki.

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And then we joined up with everyone else to head to Hämeenlinna. We picked up some lunch and had a picnic by a lake.

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After lunch, the lucky ducks in the pond got a whole bunch of bread thrown to them.

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From there we went to an elevated area where we had the chance to spend some time looking at this view.

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Arto snapped a family picture for us.

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Here’s one of all of us.

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We did a lot of stair-climbing that day. First, down the stairs.

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We hung out with the bear statue.

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Then back up those stairs, and up some more stairs into the tower.

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And back down.

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After a quick coffee break, we moved on to the castle, which was really too extensive for me to photograph well but here are a few shots.

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After that we went back to Arto and Tarja’s lake cottage, which would be our home for the next two nights. Bruce and Finn spent a while enjoying the sauna and the lake.

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I had my first sauna, too, and Ezra also partook, but Finn and Bruce were the real diehards. After a while, we enjoyed a wonderful barbecue by the lake.

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The landscape can’t be beat.

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Here’s a slideshow of all of my photos.