Pori, Finland

Most of our time in Finland centered around Kiira and Darryl's wedding (Darryl is a good friend of Jodie's). We quickly made our way up to the town of Pori, a very pretty town on the west side of Finland. We planned to stay with Kiira's family while in Pori before moving on to see other parts of Finland(Check out this map to see all of our travels in Finland).

We encountered our first surprise immediately after getting off of the train - Finland has no pay phones whatsoever! Cell phone usage is so high in the home of Nokia that pay phones have been entirely removed. This caused us a few problems because we had planned to phone Kiira's family to get some directions. We managed to find our way over to their house nonetheless - actually, her sister found us a little way from their house and we followed her.
After meeting Kiira's family and having some supper, we made our way to what would be our home for the next few days - a Finnish kindergarten. Actually, it was a duplex that was acting as an overflow kindergarten, which Kiira's mother administered. After a few months of setting up and pulling down our tent every day, it felt downright luxurious to have a space to call our own - even if everything around us was sized for 6 year olds!




















































We spent one day at the nearby seaside town of YYteri, famous for its sandy beach. The water was very cool and nearly fresh because of the limited mixing with the rest of the ocean.
That evening, we met up with Jordan Bober, a close friend of Darryl's that Jodie had met previously in Europe. He was also staying at the kindergarten, so we his luggarge off and went out to explore the town a bit.


Jordan speaks quite a few languages, including Finnish and Swedish, so he was able to act as a guide as we tried to experience the local sights.