Jane in Finland: Wednesday October 20

I am making my way around Finland :)

we got the brilliant idea of renting a car to see the countryside and some nearby cities so today we made that idea a reality. It is ridiculous to see that the price of a car for a day is the same as the price of renting the same car for 5 days. Where's the logic in that?! woe alas, we only had one to so we sucked it up and split the cost of an outlandish 120 euro. As we set out, Laura and Joris were our reporters of the interesting surrounding points. Ivan and I took the roles of driver and commandeer. Our original plan was to visit a castle 3 hrs away but seeing as the weather was less than favorable for spending a day outside, the sunlight was speedily fading and the fact that we took a wrong turn and drove away from this castle; we changed our plans to visiting the city of Kuopio instead which was only 140 km away. the drive was quite enjoyable in my opinion. I have a firm grip on what the Finnish countryside looks like - lakes, trees, farming fields and more lakes. I seriously suspect there are more lakes than solid earth in Finland.

The highway leading up to Kuopio was very interesting - it has a collection of every kind of gas station yo can think of. But no Petro Canada lol. When we finally made it into the city center, it had started to rain and blow. It wasn't the optimal sightseeing weather but we made do. Our first stop after parking our silver beauty of a car was the City Hall (much prettier than Jyvaskyla's because it wasn't under construction), the outdoor marker (they have lots of nuts), and CoffeeHouse to recharge our awake-levels before venturing out into the rain again. The indoor market was a great collection of Finnish souvenirs, Finnish food and Italian goods. I felt like I was in little Italy from the amount of Italian sausage and chocolate that we saw.

In our guide book, Kuopio was said to be famous for these fish and meat pies and luckily we found some on our way out of the outdoor market. Success was ours we thought. Until we tried them that is. We may have gotten a bad batch or something similar but they were ever-so-dry. good thing we didn't get the bigger size.

That adventure aside, we went on to explore the streets of the city center by foot and later drove to the harbor. After hitting up all of the main tourist spots that our guide book suggested, my brain had acquired enough knowledge and my feet had acquired enough water. Rain boots would have been a better choice rather than my snow boots on a day such as this.

I fell asleep on our way back until we stopped at Hesburger for dinner at another city halfway between Kuopio and Jyvaskyla. Hesburger is a Scandinavian equivalent of McDonald's but I promised myself that I would try it before I left and it was honestly the best option in that town on a Wednesday evening.

It was really cool to drive into Jyvaskyla, see the sign for my neighborhood and think to myself "I'm home." My flat is becoming more than just the cement box i originally believed it to be.