7th day: Kuopio, a city rich in culture!

The day started early, we woke up and followed to our next destination. We went to the railway station in Tampere and took a train to the city of Kuopio. The journey was long, but sometimes we were able to see the beauty of the landscape of the region and in other times we slept a little.

Kuopio

Kuopio is the largest city in eastern Finland and also the cultural center of this region, it’s surrounded by the Lake Kallavesi and many parts of the city were built on islands. Kuopio is one of the most traditional cities in the field of education, there were created one of the first schools in Finland and, in 1871, the school for blind people and the school of commerce in 1887. Kuopio is famous by it fish pastels, the Savo dialect, the hill of Kalakukko, which receives an annual ski competition (maybe one day we will be there competing!!), and the tower of Puijo, which offers to the visitor a pretty sight of the region. We are really willing to see all of this!

Männistö St. Johannes

Coming in Kuopio, we let our things in the Hostel Hermanni and took a sauna to heat a little. We sheltered ourselves and went to the city center, where we could appreciate the charming of some churches in the city. Ray loves this part of the tour that involves architecture! We visited the church Männistö St. Johannes which was created in 1992 and stands out for its modern architecture. The designer of this church, Juha Leiviskä, received in 1995, the most important prize in of world architecture: the Pritzker! We visited other churches of different architectures, two of them designed by Josef Stenbäck in Art Nouveau style: the Church of Muuruvesi, built in granite and the Church of Nilsiä, built of quartzite. All of them spectacular!

Church of Nilsiä

We had lunch in Juhlatalo Tiukanlinna, a Finnish restaurant for groups, located near the lake in the university area of Kuopio, really nice and full of cute students!! Then, we visited some of Kuopio’s famous museums, such as Kuopio Museum, which was idealized in the art nouveau and inside of it there are two museums: the Museum of Cultural History and the Museum of Natural History. The exhibition of the Museum of Cultural History offers a memory of pre-historical periods and lifestyles in this region. The Museum of Natural History exposes a huge reconstruction of the Neanderthal people, the first habitants of Finland.
We went also to the VB Photographic Center, located in the old home and studio of the famous Finnish photographer Victor Barsokevitsch. In this museum, in addition to collection of photographic history of Finland, there are photographs of the personal file of Victor, containing beautiful images.

Today we didn’t return to the hotel to rest and we decided to know everything that we could about Kuopio.So, we began to play snow golf. It was very funny because we have no idea how to play golf on the grass, imagine the ice! But it was really nice…
In the Puijo Tower, we saw the unforgettable spectacle of an endless mosaic of blue lakes and green islands. The tower is surrounded by a forest fund and has a rotating panoramic restaurant that serves local specialties. It was very interesting, because the restaurant turns while we were eating the fish pastel and we saw the beauty of the region by all angles.
Ending the day in Kuopio, we went to Puijo Christmas Hill, a wonderful Christmas atmosphere surrounding Puijo Hill in Kuopio when the Puijo Tower is lit with hundreds of lights. There, we met the Santa Claus and all of us did the request for our travel to least for a little more.