Erick, Harald, Gustav and John

Another super Nordic City, Turku is set near the estuary of Aura River and the riverbanks offer delightful strolling alongside them.  We started at the central market square where the fresh produce, fish and flowers were a treat to the senses.  We then walked West along the riverbank toward the maritime museum.  That gave us the chance to explore a 2nd world war mine laying vessel and an 18th C barque though there were plenty more moored ships to choose from.  

Our Turku card included a guided tour so we joined jolly informative Charlotte to hear something about the complicated Nordic treaties and marriage arrangements of the characters above whilst taking in a number of historic sights about town.  It finished at Turku Castle, an amazing monolith at the harbour with the chance to visit dungeons, banqueting halls and splendid chambers which had differing uses through history.  Someone must have written a most complicated algorithm in order to plan the route round as no 2 rooms were on the same level and we visited almost all 70 of them without retracing our steps.

Back at the hotel we are aiming for an earlyish dinner at a riverside restaurant.  We won't be leaving Turku terribly early tomorrow as there is plenty more to see, but with hourly trains to Helsinki, that isn't a problem.