Turku Time

Although I was up in time for breakfast at the B & B today, Anne & the twins took a little longer to get ready.  Nevertheless, we were on the road to Turku, Finland's old capital city, before 10 AM.
Our goal today was SHOPPING  and to pay for our excursion to St. Petersburg, Russa in early July.  The travel agency is in Turku and they still had Anne's passport/visa.  I still had to pay for that trip as well.


We stopped for lunch at the IKEA superstore in Raisio.  It is a very family friendly place with a cafeteria-style restaurant, high chairs, microwaves for baby bottles & nursing/changing stations in the dining room & bathrooms.   I'd never been to an IKEA store & was pretty impressed.  The food was pretty good, I thought, although I am not that fussy when I'm really hungry.

Anne says IKEA is super popular with financially strapped younger people & families here and I could see why.  The store had a decent selection in just about everything from household furniture, kitchen/living/dining/bed room cabinets and what looked like an unlimited number of household accessories.  The prices did seem reasonable compared to the limited # of other places I've been to so far (on this trip & 2 years ago when we were here for Anne & Saku's wedding.)

After we wore the twins out (they are 11 mos. old and have a limited tolerance for SHOPPING!) we continued to Turku proper.  Again we headed to a shopping/commercial district near the centre city.  Turku is much bigger than Rauma and more diverse & cosmopolitan-looking.  More gritty.  There is a pretty big cobblestone-paved market where we stopped for a cold drink outdoors.  While we sat there we heard a Rasta band (blond dreadlocks & all) and later, a fireman's marching band, in what I have to assume were very Baltic style uniforms.

 I'd like to spend more time in Turku, but today after we picked up Anne's passport /visa (& paid our bill) we shopped at a large H&M store, window shopped the Merimekko store and generally wore the twins out.  They both have a healthy set of lungs which they use to great effect when tired or cranky.

We got back to Rauma around 6 PM and Anne dropped me off for a quiet night catching up on the sleep I didn't get last night.  The midnight sun thing is keeping me up I think.  That or the coffee!  Will use the sleep mask more.  Tomorrow we go to Lassi & Rita's summer house near Pori.