Turku Day

Turku Day (Turun Päivä) was last Sunday. I love Turku Day and I wish it could be Turku Week. It's a city-wide open-doors day that doubles as the official, real, honest end of the summer. The bike ferry switches to the winter schedule, the fountains turn off at Adventure Park, and the weather turns colder.

But on Turku Day, as I said, it's a day of open doors. Most of the museums in the city are free, and several offer special programs. There's an exhibition of heavy construction trucks that are open for kids to climb all over. The library puts on plays of fairy tales for children. The old fire station downtown lets you come see the old fire trucks. There's a market at the market square and another market at the old market square. There are fireworks after dark. There is even more to do than I've described in this paragraph: when we were planning our day last Sunday, the list of things we wanted to do was literally about as long as my arm.

This year, we made it to the Suomen Joutsen (an old ship from 1910), Turku Castle, and the Ars Nova museum.

Suomen Joutsen was probably the highlight of Sterling's life so far.

Turku Castle was spectacular as always. We went there last year for Turku Day, but couldn't resist another visit this year.

Our last stop, due to time, was Ars Nova. This is an art museum plus a history museum, if you can imagine. The art part was closed due to changing exhibitions, but the history museum was open. It's a covered portion of old Turku that has been excavated and then interpreted. Fascinating.

I love Turku Day!