After getting off of our ferry cruise, we got back on the bus and continued another day of driving. We made one stop at Villa Mairea in Noormarkku, Finland, which was designed by Alvar Aalto between 1937 and 1939.
Apparently it was quite the honor for us to be there, someone said they only allow architecture and design students in there (this may or may not be true) but we were not allowed to take photos of the interior.
After spending a couple of hours there, we piled back on the bus where I fell back asleep, and woke up to a lunch misunderstanding that resulted in us having McDonald’s for lunch. It was actually rather funny, because here was this TINY McDonald’s in the middle of Somewheretiny, Finland, and in comes a line of almost 50 people who want to order food. I don’t know if they had ever gotten a lunch rush like that. After that we went to KKK Grocery (kid you not) and picked up foodstuffs for the dinners we would be making ourselves that night. Then it was back on the road for more sleeping, and by evening we made it to Jyväskylä, Finland, at a hostel at the base of an honest to goodness ski mountain.
After unpacking in our rooms, we changed into our bathing suits, piled some more layers on, grabbed our food and drinks and headed out into the woods to the sauna. Natural refrigeration was the name of the game, and as we were walking in we past the opening in the lake that we would later be jumping into. The picture is a little blurry, but you get the idea! We then split up boys and girls and went into our respective saunas to start sweating. When the heat got to be too much, we’d run down to the lake and jump into the freezing cold water, and then return to the nice toasty sauna.
After we had had our fill of the real authentic Finnish sauna, we started making our dinners over the fire.
We enjoyed our meals with each other, and all toasted with a shot of vodka before returning back to our hostel to sleep. The sauna really exhausts and relaxes you, so we were ready bed pretty much when we got back.
