If you're planning to visit Finland in the future, feel free to give Tampere a wide berth as this country has so much more to offer. The choice of quality restaurants is limited for what is a pretty big city and there is a large contingent of shady characters getting around. Of course we still managed to get a bit of shopping in, naturally! Finland is a fantastic and underrated country and we have thoroughly enjoyed the rest of our time here. The forests and lak...

This was a part of the Scandinavian trip we were probably looking forward to most as we had our own cabin in the middle of nowhere! We loved our time at the cabin. It was right on the lake and totally private. There was a Finnish couple living on a tiny island opposite us, he was really keen to socialise, he even unexpectedly brought us a whole heap of his home smoked fish wrapped up in newspaper - so sweet. But we're both reading the girl with the dragon tatoo a...

About 4 hours drive north east of Helsinki is a little town called Savonlinna. It is very much a summer town and the main reason we came here was to enjoy some of the annual opera festival which is quite big around these parts. We had a bit of a swim in the lakes too. So many lakes up here and apparently in winter you can drive between the islands when the lakes have frozen over. Hard to imagine when we're lying on the grassy banks watching all of the Finnish fam...

We weren't too sure what to expect from Helsinki but we have thoroughly enjoyed our time here. We're staying about 20 mins out of town and taking the tram in each day which has reminded us of Melbourne. The weather has been perfect so we took a ferry to Samounnlina fortress as well as an open air museum on a beautiful green island, with red squirrels running up to us. The city itself is reasonably compact compared to the likes of Moscow so we have been doing a lo...