Destination: Turku - last stop

Turku was once the capital of Finland. This city has a long history and it was finally time for Kuo Yi to give us a lesson about Finland.

We arrived at Turku at 8.00am on Sunday morning. The city was really quiet then, sort of reminds me of singapore on the first day of chinese new year. I felt the buildings here had a really unique design from helsinki and rovaniemi. I guess it was because many of them were really old.

We visited the Turku cathedral which was the mother church of the Lutheran Church of Finland and the country's national shrine. It is over 700 years old! Of course, part of it was rebuilt after the Great Fire of Turku in 1827 which destroyed most of the town. I think you should be able to notice from the picture that the bottom half of it is stone and the top is bricks.

We even had the opportunity to attend their sunday service. Wow, their choir was good although we had no idea what they were singing. haha. The worship they have here is really traditional and very much unlike those in Singapore. Maybe that's why most of the ppl i see there were middle-aged and above whereas in Singapore, it's common to see groups of youths. But I really thought this was the way a worship should be - traditional and unique.

Turku Cathedral

Turku Cathedral - entrance

Interior

From the place we sat

We visited the museum of Sibellius. And this is the portrait of Sibellius who wrote Finlandia. A great man in Finland.

After that, we came upon this river when we were walking towards the castle of turku, that resembled slightly of singapore river but wider. There were many wild ducks along the river and they were really beautiful.

There were many ships along the river too. Unfortunately they are only open for visiting during summer.

And we finally reached the castle of turku. Well it was a bad idea to travel on sundays in finland because most of the places were closed pretty early. And so we only managed to visit the perimeters of the castle. It was better than nothing.

So we departed from the castle after the terribly long walk there. We decided to roam the city and we came across another pretty church - St Michael's Cathedral:

And that was the end of my road trip to lapland and Turku. Next up - Stockholm then St Petersburg :D