The last couple days we have spent in the seaside town of Naantali, which sits on the west coast of Finland, looking out into the Finnish archipelago, which is a group of about 40,000 islands. While most of the town is like any other around here, there is a small section of it by the harbor that still has a slice of old town, with wooden buildings and narrow streets. It is only small, but quite pretty in the sun,
and it was sunny.
It wasn't warm enough to move onto the beach we were planning for the next leg though, so we decided to end our adventure for now and headed home.
Smallsteps is growing up.
It has been a nice six days away, with three quite different kinds of places, with the middle with family friends better than expected perhaps for Smallsteps. Even if the boys fought a lot with each other. That was actually a pretty decent experience to see for Smallsteps, as she hadn't witnessed that kind of arguing between siblings before. We discussed it on the drive to the next location, as she had many questions.
I have questions too.
Why was this model ship floating in the sky inside the old church?
One of the other things I liked about this little section of old town was that pretty much everywhere we went there was little pieces of original artwork, rather than prints. Below is a display on a wall from a local artist, and as Smallsteps and I had a couple minutes to ourselves, I asked her what the difference was between them and what kind of story it tells.
At first she was quite visual, noting the changes in, hair, age and then the patterns in the background. But with a little prodding, she started to think that it might represent how the girl's life changes as she gets older.
Not bad!
And what is also good, is that the day has inspired her to want to paint a canvas that has been waiting for her to start a self-portrait upon. That is a win.
It is only a small harbor in this area, but there were quite a few boats in the slips, as people who are summering around the archipelago will visit various ports in the area to resupply, or stop in for a tour. There were some pretty fancy boats around too, but Finland isn't really the place for those billionaire yachts to visit. I don't really get "super yachts", because it just seems like the people who buy them, can't really spend that much time on them anyway, so what is the point.
I also don't understand those massive palatial homes with 22 bedrooms and 27 bathrooms.
While that is not any of us playing tennis, a couple times throughout the trip Smallsteps asked if it was possible to try tennis, because she never has. I don't think it is her game to be honest, but I guess we must have some friends with kids who have some racquets we can borrow for a hit around to see if she enjoys it.
I don't think she will like chasing the ball all the time.
And to finish up, we walked to the top of the hill that overlooks the bay to see what the view was like.
Pretty good.
Taraz
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