Naantali


Naantali

Our dinner the night we got in was at Hesburger, which is one of the many cool things about Finland.  It’s a lot like McDonalds.  Like a lot a lot.  Here is their signature burger.  


Remind you of anything?  

You know how when you can tell that something is a knockoff or imitation, but they change just enough stuff that it gets away with not feeling like a total rip off?  Hesburger is like what would happen if they just didn’t try to pretend.  At all.

But the thing is it’s actually really good.  Good burger.  Fresh vegetables.  Efficient ordering and friendly quick service.  All about for half the price of American McDonalds.  You can get their version of a happy meal.  And the kids gets to pick out exactly which toy they want.  Which is how it should be everywhere.  Picking your dip is a big part of the experience.  Finns love dip, and most restaurants here with fries offer several different choices for dip.  We got the paprika mayonnaise which is sort of like a spicy fry sauce.  After we left we enjoyed a meandering walk down a greenway that ran through the middle of town, and began exploring.

Naantali is another of Finland’s oldest towns.  It was very much in the orbit of the Swedish administrative center at Turku.  It is right on the sea facing Sweden.  It has one of the oldest buildings in Finland – and one of the oldest buildings we had ever seen with our own eyes:  A Brigantine monastery founded in 1443.  

It is officially a resort town and there are several public swim beaches.  But the town sits on a coastline surrounded by an archipelago of islands.  So it doesn’t really feel like you are at the beach.  There are no waves to speak of.  It feels more like a huge lake that stretches to the horizon.  Apparently the President of Finland has a summer house here, but we never saw him.  Of course we have no idea what he looks like, so maybe we did see him.

Naantali captures so much of what we like about Finland.  It is so walkable.  And just about everywhere you walk there is something interesting.  An open air market.  A food truck.  A gentle harbor.  A proliferation of public parks and playgrounds.  


It really feels here that if you walk five minutes in any direction you’ll run into something interesting.  And it’s all kid friendly.  It’s so refreshing.  I hung out with the kids for a couple of hours while Amy had some work to do, coordinating the research she is here doing.

The architecture here is a lot like Helsinki’s – neo-classical with lots of bright yellows and pinks.  Which is especially cute for a beach town.  

There were a lot of cute restaurants close to the harbor.  But many were closed.  You could definitely tell that things were beginning to shut down for the season.  So mostly we enjoyed a quiet walk in the warm air, and stopped to play at a park.  

Then we got home and crawled into bed for one more of the worst sleeps of our lives.  

Mostly because of the jet lag.  But also a little bit out of excitement.  Because the next day we would be doing one of the things that we had come to Naantali to do...

Hei Hei

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