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Why I will always return to Finland, part 2

by Rita | Jul 22, 2015 | Finland | 0 comments

Sharing more pictures from our holiday in Finland – we have caught up with relatives and friends, been swimming and cycling, visited the Ähtäri Zoo, hiked in the gorgeous Helvetinjärvi National Park and been spoiling ourselves with all the good food.

May the peace and power be with you.

Yours,
Rita

A swim in the crystal-clear lake Kangasjärvi is a must when we are in Finland during the summer. It is a spring water lake, so the temperature of the water is accordingly cold.The warmth of our sauna felt even more welcoming than usual!

Finland has many fantastic national parks and Helvetinjärvi is one of the most beautiful of them (despite its name, which means ‘hell’s lake’!)

The paths in the Helvetinjärvi National Park are extremely well maintained with wooden steps and duckboards to take you over the steep or wet parts… and the picnic spots have fantastic views!

What do you want to do after a 3-hour hike? Take a rest on a jetty surrounded only be the sound of the water, forest and bird song, of course!

The bears at Ähtäri Zoo are the zoo’s biggest attraction, and they sure have learnt how to best attract their keepers’ attention when they are being fed frozen fruit on a warm summer day.

The “Everyman’s Right” allows anyone to freely pick berries and mushrooms in the Finnish forests. The bilberries, lingonberries and cloudberries are not ready yet, but we found a couple of chantarelles! As long as you have a few of them in your mushroom dish, you will get a truly flavourful meal. Other ingredients: onion, garlic, butter, pepper and salt and lots of cream to make the sauce – yum!

The river which runs through our village, Dagsmark, was the place where I learnt to swim as a child. In the winter we ice-skated along it.

Another picture from our picturesque village, Dagsmark.

The most important reason for why I will always return to Finland is because this is where my roots are and where I feel very much at home. This lovely picture is of my mother and father, newly wed in 1955, in the yard of our family home.

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