Travelog for: Stuart the Lion

Helllloooo, my fellow travelmates around the globe!
This is Stuart reporting from warm Tallinn, home.
My journeys are about to start and YOU have the opportunity to help me on my way. 

Hope to be on a plane soon!
(Oh, and here's a picture of me and the WORLD, hehe)

This is the order I will conquer the world:

1) Delenna (Finland)  - conquered
2) annbear (Switzerland) - conquered
3) katjaintenerife (Spain) - conquering
4) Kira1997 (Australia)
5) gingermuggins (Australia)
6) babyamy (Germany)
7) Luv_Lioness (United States)

Hellllooooo! Here I am again, this time it rains in Tallinn. We just wanted to go out for a walk today, just to take some pictures of me (ohyes, me) but it started to rain! So we decided to stay in and watch some great movies. Again. I think my mentor is crazy. She watches so much movies..
So I got bored of another one and decided to take a look at some of her postcards.



And next week I'll be off to the WORLD!
Ciaociaaao!

So, my friends. These are my last days at home because I'll be leaving for Finland very soon!
And today was my mentor's father's birthday! Yaay! 
So we went out in the morning to buy a cake and some beautiful flowers. As you can see from the picture below, we got tulips. And tulips are my mentor's favourite flowers among cornflowers. Springtime is the greatest just because tulips are sold everywhere and they grow also in every garden. The cake was a yoghurt one and very yummy.
Here I am with the cake and flowers in our backyard. 

Stuart has now been sent off to his first adventure.
Hopefully he arrives safely and has a great time in Finland!

Heeelllooouuu folks! I arrived in Finland safe & sound. Adventures will take place asap 

Outdoors! Fresh air! Sun! Jungle--- no wait that's just the grass on the shore 

Would you believe that I'm just across the ocean!? I came from Tallinn and here I am in Porvoo, also by the Baltic Sea! The Finns have quite a lot of archipelago around their coastline. This particular part in interesting because the creator of Moomin spent her summers on one of these islands around here. Anyone still wonder why Moominpappa is so in fond of the sea? 

Can you see the little house on the sea in the fifth picture? It really is on the water, without any bridge or pier to link it to the land (on the bus ride she can see it from a different angle and still no pier/bridge).  My host has been wondering about it for the whole spring since it appeared... A mystery to be solved!

You wouldn't believe the adventure I had today! I visited the Suomenlinna fortress in Helsinki. Suomenlinna is a sea fortress made up of a series of fortification works (on 8 small islands), so it is not a single fortress building. It's also a suburb of Helsinki so regular people live there in regular houses. They even have a kindergarden, a store, library - and a prison! If anyone tries to mess with me or my host I'll Grrrrrrooooowwwlllll! I'll one scary looking lion 

In the first photos I'm leaving the dock in Helsinki City and approaching Suomenlinna. You can also see the ferry we took (me, my host and a bunch of tv's). The long, pink building is called the Jetty Barracks - the most notable building from Suomenlinna’s Russian era. It was built in 1868-70 as a main gateway for the fortress. The Jetty Barracks dominates the north shore of the fortress. Most visitors to Suomenlinna enter the islands through its vaulted gateway (like we did). The east wing of the Jetty Barracks houses a recording studio, work rooms and a kiosk which also does duty as the local post office. The west wing houses a brewery, a restaurant and a gallery run by the Helsinki Society of Artists with changing exhibitions all year round. Haha! Finland has it's own West Wing 

The views are amazing don't you think? Especially the ones we saw while walking on the wall (the high place and steep fall made my host a little dizzy). I'm glad the weather was this good!

I saw a few cannons and the subrarine named Vesikko that was used in the II World War. In the 3rd last photo there's the King's Gate which is a symbol of Suomenlinna. It was built in 1753-54 as a parade gate for the fortress. It's really huge! You could see it better from further away, but we couldn't go any further or we had dropped in the Baltic Sea!

In the 2nd last photo is the tomb of Augustin Ehrensvärd (1710-1772), founder of the fortress. And in the last photo I'm on my way back to Helsinki City! This was an excellent trip! And I didn't have to growl 

The adventures didn't end here! After the trip to Suomenlinna fortress I got to see some sights in "mainland Helsinki". Here's the Presidential Palace. Did you know that the president of Finland is a woman? She's the first female president in Finland!

Then there's the Uspenski Orthodox Cathedral. Looks very interesting! And that white, big church is The Cathedral. The Cathedral is also a very well known sight of Helsinki, I believe it's on almost every postcard there is from Helsinki!

Phew, it's good to get some rest after all this walking!

May I introduce you: the sauna! This is what the Finns keep talking about over and over again. A heated room where you throw water on hot stones to get the room even more heated and humid! As a lion I enjoyed it  It made me think of savanna... Although I don't believe the temperature will rise there to 60-80C which is a good sauna temperature (I was told)!

It was good we went to the sauna yesterday to clean up as today we held the 4th birthday party to one of my host's kids! My host had made a "doggie face cake". I got to help decorate it! Okay okay I helped clean the whipped cream off the beater - that was a tasty job 

Grrrreetings! Here I am in the Old Town of Porvoo. Porvoo is the second oldest city in Finland and the Old Town is its most welknown sight. There are many narrow gobble stone streets and a few not so narrow with many small shops. One shop sells toys made of wood, tin, fabrick - basically anything else but plastic toys. They have that Moomin house on the window and they change the view several times a year; during winter there's winter Moomin scene, during Easter it's Easter theme etc. I tried to talk to Moominmamma but I guess she didn't hear from me from the other side of the window. That shop also has these king & queen chairs outside - I of course had to try the king seat as I'm the king of the jungle! In the last picture there's the old market square where they still have events every now and then (especially in the summer). 

We continued our walk towards the Porvoo River. There's the oldest bridge. Behind it you can see the Castle Hill - without a castle though. There used to be a castle/fortress hundreds of years ago, now you can only see a lot of trees and the castle moats. It's a great place to play Robin Hood my host told me!

In the second photo there are the old, red shore houses that used to be warehouses - and some still are but some are also living quarters. That boat makes one big contrast there don't you think. The third photo gives a glimpse to the Cathedral. The roof was burnt by arson 2 years ago and it's still being rebuilt!

We have now turned back towards the city center. I saw the flag of Finland and my host told me that Finland's national figure is the lion! Wow! I feel so special! Then there's again some handicrafts shops but who cares when I'm a national figure! 

Now we see the river again! There on the other side are the newer versions of the shore houses (they're close to each other, the old and the new, just on opposite shores) which are all regular houses. There are quite few boats on the river - and a few bar/restaurant/cafes. It's a popular place in the summer, people like to sit there and have a drink.

The park is the "Runeberg's Park". He is the national poet and his statue is in the middle of the park. On the other side of the park there's the busstation and the market place, the new one. They're the city center here.

This was my tour in Porvoo! Next weekend I get to travel by train to... Ha, I won't tell you, it's a suprise!

Signing off, the national figure/animal 

Here I am on a new adventure! I'm now in Tampere a city about 2h drive away from Porvoo. We took the train from Helsinki and the train ride takes also 2h. We spent a whole day in the Särkänniemi Adventure Park! I could see some of the rides but we didn't go on many as we were there with kids. I also saw the dolphin show in the most northern dolphinarium of the world! The dolphins were very skillfull! Later I got to go on Näsinneula Tower which is the tallest observation tower in the Nordic countries. The top of the tower stands at a height of 168 metres but we were at 124 metres (by the way: the lifts travel at a speed of 6 metres per second). The views were quite amazing from up there!