nature

Vyborg – Viipuri

Posted by gozamite on 28.12.2019
Posted in: Matkustus, nature, Reisen, Russia, Travel, walking. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

Vyborg is a city that was part of Grand Duchy of Finland from 1812 to 1917 and part of independent Finland from 1917 to 1940 but was finally lost to Russia after World War II.
Russia made it now possible to apply e-visa for a short visit in St. Petersburg area so this is what I did.
Me and my wife took the border crossing in Svetogorsk and because it was first time for me in Finland-Russia border it took nearly 1,5 hours to get through all the papers and documents. But we knew it will be like this so we were at the border quite early. We took a short stop at Svetogorsk centrum.

Svetogorsk is a smelly city… They have old paper factories.

From this not-so-beautiful-city we took a one hour drive to Vyborg. There I made a short stop at the train station. There is still parts of the original train station left but that was destroyed in WWII. It was originally quite accurate copy (smaller size) of Helsinki railway station.

Vyborg railway station

But finally I stopped my car in the market square. And we were lucky it wasn’t raining so we could explore the city on foot.

Vyborg castle
  • Market Hall
  • Buildings on the other side of Market Square
  • Ruined buildings
  • Old Town Hall
  • Transfiguration Cathedral from the inside
  • Cat inside Transfiguration Cathedral
  • The only Lutheran church “Saints Peter and Paul church”
  • Round Tower
Vyborg

There are many buildings in very bad condition or totally ruined in Vyborg. But luckily some of the buildings they are renovating so there will be something to see in the future also.
The city is definitely much more nice to see in the summer but we thought it was beautiful also now in the beginning of december… On a very grey weather. After the city tour we took a walk also in the famous Monrepo Park.

  • Pavilion
  • Ludwigstein castle
  • Väinämöinen
  • View from the hill
STATE HISTORICAL-ARCHITECTURAL AND NATURAL MUSEUM-RESERVE MONREPO PARK

In tourist maps this area is sometimes called as a National Park. But mostly there are some buildings, Art, Statues and other “things” in this area so it’s not a “normal” national park. Half of the area is under construction so we could see only the other side of the park. This would be totally amazing place to visit on a beautiful summer day!
I hope I will come cack to this beautiful town again some day. And of course Saint Petersburg… E-Visa makes the visiting Russia so much easier now!

Panorama pictures

Posted by gozamite on 2.5.2019
Posted in: HDR quality, Matkustus, nature, summertime, walking. Tagged: , , . Leave a comment

I got myself DJI Osmo Pocket and I can say that it is quite amazing device! I totally don’t know all the functions it has but here I’m testing how it takes Panorama-pictures. You can take 180 -degree panoramas and 3 x 3 panoramas with Osmo pocket and I’m choosing the 180-degree pictures:

Click the pic to see full resolution

Maybe I wasn’t thinking too much what I was shooting. But anyway this Hvitträsk museum area is very beautiful place and I haven’t seen too many panorama-pictures from there before (maybe I wasn’t even looking!) You can see the rest of the pictures here.

Tour around Finland Day 10

Posted by gozamite on 29.8.2018
Posted in: adventure, BMW motorrad, Kävely, Matkustus, Moottoripyöräily, motocaching, motorcycling, nature, S1000XR, Travel, Video, walking. Tagged: , , , , , , . Leave a comment

We had an idea to do some hiking today. But first we needed to ride to the place where we wanted to hike… So we started quite early, we rode only about 190 kilometers to reach out destionation in Kilpisjärvi. On this ride we only made short stop at Enontekiö/ Hetta to fill the tank and in Muotkatakka which is the highest point of the road in Finland.
After midday we were already changing clothes and shoes and starting our Hike up to the Saana mountain. The motorcycle was parked behind Kilpisjärvi hotel, the elevation was about 500 meters there.
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And we had about 4 kilometers walk up to the mountain where the maximum elevation is 1029 meters. So at the same time when we were walking 4 kilometers to the top we also had to climb about 530 meters up!
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After first kilometer the trees are gone. This was the easiest part. The path was very rocky and we had to use also hands few times when the hill was very steep.
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The landscape was simply incredible! It was difficult to concentrate to climbing when you have these amazing views all around you!
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Can you see my bike?? It’s waiting there…
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After 2 hours and 10 minutes we were at the top! 1029 meters above sea level and 550 meters above the lake Kilpisjärvi!
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On our way down the weather was even better and more clear. We got some amazing pictures!
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We had a nice apartment with sauna to spend the night. This was maybe the most amazing day of our holiday trip!
My wife made a video about this day:

The route of the day was like this:

Tour around Finland Day 9

Posted by gozamite on 26.8.2018
Posted in: adventure, adventure bike, Lapland, Make life a ride!, motocaching, motorcycling, nature, S1000XR, summertime, touringbike, Video. Tagged: , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

This day was little bit cloudy and it wasn’t so hot. We started to ride the beautiful road to Karigasniemi. The route follows the Teno river and you can see to the other side of the river (Norway) almost all the time! From Karigasniemi we turned to Norway, this had to be done because it’s a really nice shortcut to Enontekiö (in western Lapland) -the road in Finnish side would be 340 kilometers:
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And if the take the road from Norway side, it will be more than 100km shorter!
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Almost right after we crossed the border it started raining! And we were riding in the heavy rain about 5 minutes and then the rain was light and it didn’t bother anymore -but the road was wet.
In Vuottašjávri we made a short sidetour to a small cape in the lake. There was quite nice sandbeach and I’m already regretting that I didn’t go to swim!
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I also fell with the bike here but it was so soft sand so no marks to the bike!
It took awhile before the road was dry again and we could actually see some sun peeking behind the clouds. It was very nice to stop beside the road and take a good look around you. This part of Norway is called Finnmark and the surraundings here are simply amazing!
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Maybe our visit to Norway was a bit short… We were back in FInland much too soon!
We chose the road to Näkkälä village (40 inhabitants) and this was again a very good choise! This kind of totally empty landscape (beside the road) is very rare in Finland!
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This picture is about from the end of the road. There’s a beautiful creek (or a river) and this small village with few houses. Ofcourse in the deepest winter it’s little bit different here! (The sun doesn’t come up in 2 months, it can be -30 celsius with more than 1m of snow…)
We had very nice cabin from Kelotin Rantamajat and we went to have a dinner in Galdotieva -this was unfortunately the worse meal in our trip. Wife had the reindeer kebab and I had the “local steak”. Both of the portions were mostly terrible! Meat was almost burned and you couldn’t tell if it was pork, reindeer or pieces of soil from the yard… We do not recommend this at all!!
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This cabin had the kitchen and toilet! It was very nice!
My wife made a video of this day:

The route for this day was like this: