Finland? Estonia and Latvia?

Twoin18
Sun, 06 Apr 2025 00:58:12 +0000

I went to a conference in Finland in late June/early July in the early 1990s and took a week to tour the country. Helsinki was interesting but didn’t need more than a day and the better architecture was more modernist than ancient (think Dulles airport!), certainly nothing like the old Hanseatic towns around the Baltic (including Tallinn though I’ve not been there).

I enjoyed the Lake District (I went to Savonlinna), admittedly in good weather, for swimming and I imagine boating would be fun too.

But the main reason to go at that time of year was to head to the far north (Lapland) to see the midnight Sun. I did some hiking there, stayed in some remote huts in Pyha-Luosto and Urho-Kekkonen National Parks. I mostly hitched once I got beyond the end of the rail line. The landscape isn’t that exciting, it has nothing on Norway, though the remote vastness has a beauty of its own (especially as I was backpacking completely on my own). If I’d had the time (and a rental car!) to go all the way to the Arctic Ocean I expect it would have been more spectacular.