Turku; Friday, 23 June, 2017

The best nights sleep I’d had for several days meant I woke refreshed, and after a good breakfast at the hotel I caught the train into the centre of Helsinki.

I had about an hour to spare so I had a bit of a wander around the area around the central station before heading back to the station to pick up my train out to Turku.

The train journey was smooth and we arrived into Turku on time. I walked the 10 minutes or so across town to the hotel and checked in.

After dropping off my bags I headed out and started by wandering down along the riverside. My first stop was one of the many companies offering boat tours of the archipelago, and about the only one that was running services on the Saturday – which was the mid-summer holiday in Finland, so I booked onto their evening dinner cruise which guaranteed I had something to do on the Saturday evening and that I would be able to get some dinner.

I continued walking by the river down past the maritime museum (closed until the Sunday morning due to the Bank Holiday weekend) to the Castle (closed until the Monday due to the bank holiday weekend.)

I had a look round the outside of the castle and wandered back alongside the river until I spotted the city’s floating bar-come-tour boat about to pull into the stop close to where I was. As that was running I decided to hop on board and went for a little cruise up and down the river for the time it took to drink two very pleasant local beers in the warm mid-Summers sun.

I was on the boat long enough to be able to have dinner onboard as well as they fired up the on-deck bbq, but decided it was probably time to disembark when I managed to get a massive dollop of mustard right down my white T-shirt.

Thankfully the boat was pulling up at the stop nearest my hotel so I hopped off and headed back to my room to clean up.

I went out for a bit more of a wander around the city – which by now was almost deserted, most people having headed home for the mid-summer celebrations so I headed back to the hotel, had a drink in the bar and then turned in for the night.