2018 Sep 02-04 Vaasa and a Meteorite Crater (Soederfjaerden)

Saturday evening, arrived and had time to buy groceries and (of course) have a sauna.

If you didn't know, Finland loves licorice (also the ammonium-choride-salty kind, Salmiak). Turns out, dates dusted in licorice taste and have the mouth-feel of, well, soft licorice.

Finland prides itself on design, one rather big porcelain producer is "Arabia", which you can find everywhere, including the grocery store. (Above right)

There was a chips and tex mex aisle.

Sunday 02 Sep 2018 the local highest point

The first full day necessitated a walk up the only hill in the area, for a good view of the surrounding archipelago.

The path up, full of birch trees (reminds me of the Northeast US a bit, really striking, especially with the flowers still blooming), and another guest on the trail:



The view from the top of the archipelago (including the prevalent various sorts of pine trees around):




Further exploring yielded a delightfully progressive sign (imo)

Also saw this Pizza place, "Dallas Pizza Palazzo", which has a sort of oddly proportioned white statue of liberty, and a matching white limo for guests? I hear the pizza is not that great. The sign (left) is a good example of local signage. This is the Swedish-speaking region of Finland, and often signs are first in Swedish, and second in Finnish (other way around in Helsinki, e.g.)
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Monday 03 Sep 2018 A Boat ride and Cranes in a Meteorite crater

The day involved some noodling around on a smallish boat (one can also effectively row it, which I am not a natural at).

500 000 years ago, a crater was made in this region by a giant meteorite impact. 

Since the retreat of the glaciers (post ice age), which were 3km thick, Finland has been slowly lifting up. So given the time that has passed, the crater went from a nice deep region of water to something more swampy and around 1920 (?) the locals decided it made more sense to pump the water out (and keep pumping it) to free up the land for farming:


Cranes love this (although farmers do not love the cranes) and in the summer, they nom on whatever cranes eat and then fly out to the islands at night.

Some video of the cranes flying, complete with noises.

Zoom-less picture of some of the cranes flying away:

(start of) Tuesday 04 Sep 2018

In the morning, cycled into town and back.

Vaasa has a university and about 60 000 inhabitants. The statue of the woman centaur is in front of a university building (former factory building). The dude on the right is in the main town square. I like the yellow building behind him.

2018 June/July Kos, Greece: Pt 2: Mountain biking Kéfalos

After a run in with some ants Sunday morning (handled afterwards by our host), we went down to Katerina's Cycle Hire (the only cycle hire in Kéfalos, I think). Katerina is from Australia and has lived on Kos for about 30 years. She just bought the Scott mountain bikes this year in hope of pulling in people interested in higher end bikes, and we were the first to use them. Special deal for the weekend at 10 Euros/day (normally 13), we rented them for the two remaining days.

Sunday July 1st: Mountain Biking: 

Structure of the day (similar on Monday):

1. Cycle up and around a bit, including up to some of where we had gone previously by car and foot
2. then down to the Agios Theologos beach and restaurant for lunch and a swim 
3. continue cycling along dirt and sandy paths, eventually returning "home"

Total distance was around 30 km, elevation change about 350m, I think. Road conditions were not as expected from the previous day's explorations. Display of GPX (elevation and route) of the path.

There are a surprising number of roads around Kéfalos which are wide enough for a car, but never have been paved, and many clearly having suffered water damage. It felt like we were the only ones to use much of the paths we fought along, outside of the people who clearly must live in the occasional house we came across.

There were also some abandoned things. Here is what looks like an old quarry, and abandoned building nearby. For animals?

We saw many goats, some cows, and at some point, a wild(?) turkey.

Ate a well-earned lunch in the early afternoon at the Restaurant at Agios Theologos Restaurant and nearby beach. This was the Agios Theologos salad, with capers and haloumi and local wine-cheese.

   

A lot of restaurants also kind of "run" the beach nearby, having chairs and umbrellas and an employee who comes down to ask you for some money if you make use of them (5 or 6 Euros on average).

After lunch, went for a swim and played around with one of the "free to use" surf boards on the beach. 

Good example of the sort of path, when it was good (not piles of sand, not too steep, not broken into chunks from rains/runoff):

Much struggling later, returning back around Kéfalos, had to take a break to let some goats be herded across the road. Originally a video, so hopefully you can access it by clicking on it. Or here.

Here was a nice view of Kalymnos (island to the north):

Monday July 2nd: Mountain Biking before returning home: 

Given a flight at 8pm, and shuttle pick up around 6pm, we opted for a shorter route, about 4km to a beach, 150m elevation change, and then back along what looked more road-like, with a detour to look at the ruins of a basilica and an island close enough to shore that people could swim to it. Total route around 13km, here with the display of the GPX data (elevation info exact route).

The path the beach degenerated into a kind of thorny goat path and involved a lot more walking than cycling for a good chunk. 

Goal of the ride:Limnionas beach. 

Again, went down to the beach to swim and cool off, then went up to the restaurant for some lunch.

Heading back, view of the cute island in Kéfalos bay:

Ruins of Basilica to the left, island right:

Connie had said we could check out as late as we needed, so we had plenty of time to return the bikes, buy some snacks, shower, slowly and carefully re-pack, and wait on the shuttle. We also showed up 2 hours early to the airport (clearly way too early). 

OH! Right. The Kos airport is owned by the same people who run the Frankfurt airport.  (Fraport)

Parting remarks: 

Even more than Germany, cash is king in Kos. Car rentals and paying for hotels are in cash -- the hotel with our multi-legged visitor was about 30 Euro a night,  and the replacement 40 or 44 Euro a night.

Forgot to post this on day 1. Are these things you hear cicadas? Or, what is the Greek analog? To me, they sounded screechy-er than cicadas.

Kos is really really windy on the North and west shores, and calm on the south. Makes it, I think, a good compromise for people where e.g. one person wants beaches for swimming and sunning and the other just wants to wind/kite-surf all week.

The people were generally friendly and we never had the impression that anyone was trying to take advantage of us. When buying tasty cheese, the guy at the store said hey actually that is going to be (such and such amount --i.e. price in register was higher than labeled, due to the cost of this shipment) Is that ok or should I put it back? That is, even though we can't read the receipt, he let us know about this 20 cent difference.

I don't tend to visit many places more than once, but could recommend Kos -- although maybe rent a car. The bus system is star-shaped or maybe finger-shaped, radiating out from Kos-town, which makes it hard to get from point A to point B without going all the way back to Kos-town, making a 30 minute car ride into a 2 hr bus ride with a change at Kos-town.