Finland pt 2

Part 2

One day we walked along the River Aura, which bisects the town. There's a path/boardwalk, which lies at the bottom of a pretty steep slope. We made it down to the riverside path and proceeded upstream, which was also the way towards Morgan and Wax's apartment. There was not much action on the river. A few ducks; no boat traffic. Still, there were wildflowers, and the rolling was easy, until the path ended in steps. We retraced our way and continued along the river on the lowest street. After a short while we came to the top of the flight of steps. The riverside path continued at the bottom of another steep ramp. At this point we realized we were no more than three blocks from Morgan and Wax 's apartment. They had feared we couldn't make the trip on our own. 9 blocks. With 1 turn. Sigh. I did help Sheila push. The riverside path started right up again, at the bottom of a short sharp slope. L8r, we walked that segment with Morgan.

I'd imagined the corner store smaller than it is. We liked buying pastries, & not just for the obvious reason. You put your choice on a scale & press the numbered button corresponding to the item. The machine prints out a label with price, etc. If you want diversity, items w different code #s get weighed separately. It was possible to buy bad bread, I suppose, but why wld u?

One day we took a taxi out to the archipelago, which is exactly what it sounds like. We went to a park, which is sort of like a state or national park in the US. There is no gate where you have to pay, but there is a big parking lot. Near it are three old wooden buildings. In front of them are some wooden picnic tables and a couple of wooden more or less life-size animals for kids to play on. I couldn't go into any of the buildings, but I do know that one of them is a café where you buy lunch. They have drinks there, and I guess some food, but if you order a meal they give you a ticket that you take to the next building. This place sells smoked fish plates, which contain, besides the fish, new potatoes, what passes for salad in Finland (mostly just arugula), and I think there was something else. Apparently there are some shepherds who herd sheep the way Vikings did (when they weren't pillaging or maybe after they retired from seafaring) but the path was too rough and no one wanted to push my wheelchair there. Plus, the kids wanted to go swimming. Did I mention the kids? This is where we met Wax's two brothers and their families. Martin, Leena, and baby Sofia couldn't stay; they had a 5 Hour Drive back home to some place inland in south-central Finland I gather. Now why did Dragon capitalize hour and drive; is 5 Hour Drive a rock band? The world may never know, but I digress. (Dragon NaturallySpeaking is the Voice recognition software I use, and if there are any typos in this sentence I'm not fixing them. Program should work better.) Mece, Tina, six-year old Carmela, and three-year-old Leon, Loke, and Ciara stayed more or less the rest of the day. Yes, triplets. We took a steep and harrowing path to a small artificial beach. Had the sand not been dumped there, the shore would probably have consisted of partially lithified mud. One might have imagined one was on the shore of an artificial lake, perhaps a reservoir, in the United States, and not a particularly large one. The other side, close enough that we would have been able to tell whether there were nude sunbathers (there weren't) was actually another island. You're looking at an arm of the sea, albeit a brackish one. The kids went swimming au naturel. No one else in our party was inclined to do that. Some other people we didn't know showed up; they had swimsuits under their clothes.

We drove to the town of Pargas and ate lunch at the only restaurant, attached to the only hotel. It was very nice. Sheila and I shared an entrée, so it wasn't fish. We also shared an appetizer; nine different kinds of seafood: Yum! Carmela was obsessed with the roses.

After lunch we walked to the limestone quarry that is clearly the only significant employer in the town. It's big, one of the biggest in the world. We were all suitably impressed with a hole enough to drop a few dozen small islands into.