Subject: I DROVE to the North Cape! Date: Fri, 18 Jul 1997 10:15:09 -0400 From: "Mary Byrne at Accurate" <mbyrne@Accurate.COM>
--- Hi all,
We're back from our trip to Finland. It was wonderful. Started out with the news that we could not get on the tour that we thought we had booked to the North Cape, so we had to scramble in Helsinki to make other plans. It actually turned out to be better. We flew to Ivalo, Finland and rented a car. Now we were above the Artic Circle, in Lapland. A three hour drive to Lakeselv, Norway from which we made our assault on the North Cape. I felt like Hiliary at base camp about to climb Everest. It was only a two hour drive from Lakeselv to the Cape, and sure enough the Cape was socked in fog. It didn't dampen my spirits though. I was on top of the world!
The midnight sun is for real. It makes you want to start a hike after dinner or do anything else but go to sleep because you know it isn't going to get dark. Also reminds you that you are living on a ball that is hurling around in space.
When Dad settled in to his three day meetings I took a tour to the homes of architect Sarrinen and composer Sibbelius. Very interesting. Saarinen built his home with two other architects and they joined two houses with a working studio. All the furniture was designed by him and some of the rugs were designed by his wife. They had a circle of very creative friends so paintings were done by known Finnish artists. Sibbelius was also an interesting person. He had no musical instruments in his house. He composed without ever playing the music. He saw music as colors -- his green tile fireplace was F major.
For my last day on my own I took a hydroplane to Tallin, the capitol of Estonia. That's like an old walled German town. Not well maintained but they're working on it. My adventure there was to find some kind of long bag to carry home a reindeer skin that Dad insisted on buying. Saw orange plastic tubing used in a department store over the manequins and talked the sales people into cutting a five foot length for me. That was fun.
Didn't buy any souvenirs but picked up special rocks as I saw them. Helsinki is built on bedrock so I picked up a piece of red granite from the fortress island in the harbor. It's similar to the pink granite I have from the bottom of the Grand Canyon and also from Egypt. It is one world after all.
Those are the highlights. I strongly recommend a vacation in Finland. Now I'm interested to see what it's like in winter. I heard that it is not so dark as you might think, because the snow, northern lights and moon glow give it a special illumination.
What is everybody else up to?
Mom/ Aunt Mary/ Mary