Me and a big ass salmon!
Our hotel in Haparanda was great despite the odd check-in process. We walked down to breakfast Monday morning and the hotel was alive with guests and employees. Last night Donna was able to figure out how to get to Kemi. We will take a bus at 5:20pm Finish time, which is 4:20pm Swedish time. We are calling it the 4:20 Bus so we don't miss it. It's the only bus we could find besides a bus that left at 4am.
Our hotel in Kemi reached out and let us know reception closes at 6pm and to let them know if we would be arriving after hours. I wrote back and let them know our bus is scheduled to arrive at 5:55pm so if the bus was late we would be later than 6pm. They wrote back and gave us after hours check-in instructions.
We talked to reception and we can leave our bags here at the hotel while we explore Haparanda / Tornio and then come back and get the bags and take the mile-ish walk to the bus station.
Our plan was to visit a grocery store, a brewery that just sold to go beer, and see some more of the parks and birds in the area.
It's a gloomy day today which is fine by me. Our walk took us passed some housing.
The grocery store is in a mall on the Finland side.
I wanted to buy some sweet Finish shoes but Kicks sells makeup.
The grocery store was more like a Target Store. It had groceries and clothes and other stuff. Check out those old round crackers on a stick display.
Finland is the most Metal nation in the world, they say. They have the Heavy Metal Knitting World Championships in Finland. They also practice the ancient art of Heavy Metal Karaoke.
We bought some toothpaste, lotion, a weird pastery, and some novelty ice cream.
On the way out of the mall we saw the dual clocks showing Finish time and Swedish time.
After eating our novelty ice cream, we walked to the brewery.
It was a very small retail outlet inside a multipurpose building with a food place, a trampoline gym, and a few other things. We bought 3 cans to go.
Now it was time to head back to the hotel to pick up our bags for our 4:20 Bus.
We also are our weird pastery on the walk back which turned out to be a flat twice baked potato. It was weird but good.
We saw a European Pied Flycatcher.
We made it back to the hotel and picked up our baggage and then headed towards the bus station.
The bus was at 4:20 and we wanted to get there at 3:45.
The bus station is in the parking lot of the IKEA. Well not really but basically. We had half an hour so we walked to IKEA and got hot dogs and drinks. While we were eating Donna figured out we were doing the math wrong and had an hour and a half until we needed to be at the bus station. The bus was at 5:20! Calling it the 4:20 Bus worked! We were an hour early rather than an hour late.
We took our time eating and then got an ice cream to kill more time.
We decided to go to the bus station a little early for safety. This was the only bus to Kemi.
The bus station was oddly empty. There were a few employees, but it wasn't a bustling station.
We found our bus on the "big" board and felt more at ease.
Our Bus arrived right on time. It turned out it was just waiting in the parking lot until it was time to pull into the station. We put our bags in the cargo area and grabbed seats.
The bus had about 10 people on it so it wasn't a mad scramble for seats.
We sat up front right behind the driver.
Our trip was scheduled to be about 35 minutes. We made several stops picking up people along the way.
I don't know how these people deal with once a day busses. Maybe there are other ways we couldn't see when looking for our trip.
We arrived at the station a few minutes early. The bus station is right across the street from our hotel and the train station we are using to get to Helsinki on our overnight train. We hurried across the street to the hotel and arrived at 5:55, so we were in time for in person check-in. Just kidding! They left early so we used the late check-in instructions and everything went well.
Our room is a little Twin Peaksy. It smell has a nice wood smell.
There was also a weird 2nd bed around the corner.
And a nice table for us to eat our dinner at.
Most of the lighting was incredibly harsh and in your eyes but we didn't really need it because the sun never completely set.
One thing that was a surprise to us was that we had a shared bathroom. This was news to us.
The bathroom had an odd chair in the shower. Luckily I didn't have any audience when I took my shower in the morning. I had pictured an attendant sitting there with a mint and hand towel while you took your shower.
That evening we walked over to another grocery store and grabbed some food for dinner and a couple of beers. Finland liquor laws allow alcohol sales up to 8% so they had 8% malt liquor beers and watered down 8% wine.
The grocery store was another Target type store. The same chain we went to in Tornio.
They had a giant yarn selection with quality yarn and knitting supplies.
Nacho Cheese Tortilla Chips all in English.
Tons of half price cheese.
And a funnel cake dessert.
Shopping for dinner went well. We walked back to the hotel with our haul and settled in for the rest of the night.
We split some ribs and roast chicken, we split a couple of Finish beers, we shared some crisper drawer coleslaw (we called it that because there were all kinds of things in it including cranberries), and then we split one of the funnel cakes.
Oh and we bought a bag of apricots. It was all good. The rest of the evening we watched YouTube and planned how we were going to kill time in Kemi between check-out and our 10:30pm train.
While Donna looked for things to do, I searched to see if there is much movement between Finland and Russia on a daily basis. I wondered if the shared border had workers crossing daily like The US and Mexico. Apparently it doesn't and Fins really don't go to Russia. A Reddit thread showed many went once and never again. This was my favorite comment.
The next morning we ate breakfast and then took our time getting ready. Check-out was at noon and we used our whole time.
At noon we left our bags at the hotel and went for a hike to a public grill in the woods. The Google reviews said it was a good place to fry some sausages. We had leftovers to eat picnic style.
We reached our picnic location and had a nice lunch snack.
After lunch we continued on to the swimming beach and then met up with where we entered the nature area.
We walked by a few department stores on the way in so we decided to stop at one. It had a cafe and a bathroom.
It felt like a Fleet Farm (yea I'm a midwesterner now) mixed with an IKEA.
I tried to justify buying this outfit.
We got another lunch snack. Donna got a doughnut and I got this 2 headed hot dog wrapped in a tortilla stuffed with mustard, ketchup, relish, and mashed potatoes. It was tasty.
Our next stop was a mall with a store that reminded us of Fred Meyer.
Bit first we went out this door that warned of a huge step down. It was a pretty big step but we didn't fall into the portal shown in the image.
Donna shopped for warm cheap dog coats.
She also bought some high quality yarn at a bargain price. Knitting must be way more popular here.
We saw these uncanny furries advertising some sort of clothing.
Our next stop was a small Kemi History Museum.
It talked about the history of Kemi and their giant paper mill industry. They had a "find the mouse" scavenger hunt for kids.
There were 10 mice hidden around the museum. I'm not one to brag but, I found them all! Probably faster than most kids take to find them.
After the museum we took another nature walk, this time along the bay.
Then we headed back to the hotel to pick up our luggage.
We kept the Army of Darkness away while we were walking back.
We grabbed our luggage and then went to Cafe Bar Ankkuri for dinner. It was surprisingly good.
Their coat check room was awesome.
After dinner we went to a beer bar to kill the rest of the time.
The bar had an unassuming entrance in this sleepy town.
But it was trivia night so the place was packed! All of the trivia was in Finish so we could only understand the words, Australia and Game of Thrones.
Their beer list was pretty good.
We skipped the house wine.
Trivia night made the vibe great and it got even better when trivia ended and hockey started. The bar tenders put on their hockey jerseys when the game started.
Soon it was time to head back to the train station. We sat outside and waited for the train. It was a really nice evening.
All of the lumber cars were filled with lumber now. They were empty earlier.
The train pulled in right on time.
This was our room for the night. Our trip was 10:30pm to 9:15am.
I took the top bunk this time.
Our breakfast was delivered at 7:30am. We took our time eating and packing up.
Helsinki!
We are in the final parts of this trip. We have a week here in Helsinki and then two nights in Talin Estonia and then we head back to the states. Now it's 9:30 and we have to kill time until we can check in to our hotel at 3pm.
