{finland, day 12, kajaani castle ruins, tar making}

it's taking me forever to do this vacation report. i'd only select my favorite pictures to show here except that this blog is for myself as well. i don't keep photo albums, i keep blogs. so bear with me. we're past the half way point at least. :)

before we left kajaani, we stopped at the castle ruins to take some pictures.

as a child, i used to play in the park behind it. there was an awesome frozen tobogganing hill in the winter.

i've always been a bit scared of the river around the ruins. i honestly can't believe that they haven't built some sort of a fence around the ruins. the river flows very quickly at times due to the water power stations.

there's a great history behind the kajaani castle but i won't bore you with those details. :)

bye bye kajaani. hope to see you again soon.

on the road again. this time to the west coast. to a place called yyteri. about 6 kilometres of sandy beach was waiting for us...

at one of the ABC stops, i found these historic pictures of people making tar. one of my ancestors was a tar master so i was intrigued by the pictures.

finland used to supply tar for ship builders in europe. finnish people still like the tar smell. there are tar scented candles, for example.
anyways, if someone happened to see a silly FINNISH tourist snapping pictures of these pictures at a ABC stop... it was me. :)

in yyteri, we visited with my dad. we stayed at a hotel right on the beach. but guess what?

the whole time we stayed here, the weather didn't co-operate. it was cloudy and rainy. there was even a huge storm one night. the sand was flying like crazy and the wind actually caused quite a bit of damage in the surrounding area. did we pick the right time to visit the 6 kilometres of beach or what?! :D oh well, we still got to do fun stuff so it was ok. i just thought it was kind of funny that i barely even saw the beach at all. :)