When you fly into Helsinki you can see clearly that the whole city is surrounded by nature making it really easy to find nature near Helsinki and a huge variety of outdoor adventure. I found my bit of nature with Piece of Forest, a cute little company I’ll introduce you to.
I love that you can just drive 20 minutes away from the city and you feel like you are in the middle of nowhere.
There are SO many options for adventure in Finland. We went up to Oulu in the North for huskies and reindeer, but that required a flight. If you want to go on a day trip outside of Helsinki to enjoy nature near Helsinki, then you want to look at Espoo, which is only 25 minutes away by car.
Finland offers a “stopover” program where if you fly Finnair they allow you to stay in Finland for a week without charging you more on your flight layover extension. There’s so much to do in Finland that a stopover might not be long enough!
They sent us visiting bloggers in groups to each of their “stopover” locations which are all able to be visited in one day from Helsinki. But, the good thing is if you do a stopover, you have more days to check out all the nearby attractions.
I apologize in advance for the number of photos in this post! I recently started shooting in RAW thanks to bloggers teaching me how to edit better and I was having a good time trying to be creative with my shots!
The girls who are running Piece of Forest have already won many awards for their project, and it’s officially been added to the Finland tourism website as a fantastic relaxing day to have in Espoo.
We started off the day by trying a shot of a local berry drink. It was really tasty! I love trying out new foods and drinks when I travel, but to be honest, I’m not that adventurous, I mean I don’t even like olives which made Morocco pretty boring haha.
I loved that Finnish food wasn’t really weird, but was healthy and fresh!
We next started out trek around the property. We had some photographers in our group who taught us a little bit about taking pictures in the snow. For example, it always looks really blue, so you have to make it warmer when you edit so that it’s not too blue. You also have to turn the exposure up because the snow will reflect and make the photo dark.
The lake was beautiful. It was not thick enough to go out and walk on it, although there was a local ice skating on the lake. It was like 8 cm they guessed. The walkway was really slippery all through the paths in the woods so wear good boots.
If you don’t have good boots, they actually have some you can borrow from them in various sizes.
photo taken by Fall Into Finland
You can walk as long as you want. There is a lot of land. But, you can also go back via the road when you feel like you’ve had enough cold. We split up our group, and half of us went back earlier to warm up by the fire.
Their little house was so cute and cozy. It actually started to snow while we were inside and it was beautiful!
We snacked on some chips and local rye bread until the group was all back and ready for dinner.
The tea we drank was extra tasty because we added the berry juice I mentioned earlier to the tea. What a good idea the Finns have! I love it. These little cups “kuksa” are totally Finnish. They actually carry them around and use their own cups when they are out and about. They use them for tea, coffee, and for some people, even booze.
We had potatoes for lunch which were made outside over a bonfire. Apparently, it’s a very Finnish thing to do. They love smoked salmon, so there was a salmon dip on the table that they put on top of the potato. There was also a tomato-based stew that we added to the potatoes!
They rye bread with butter was the bomb. I love that they use these little wooden knives for butter (everywhere I went in Finland). I actually bought one. They are so clever; the wooden knife doesn’t make the bread go crumbly.
Practical information for visiting Piece of Forest:
- You can contact the owner & guide, Elli, at elli@pieceofforest.fi. You can also get online and visit their website.
- They offer more than a walk with lunch. You can see all their excursions on their website.
- Check out another adventure: playing with reindeer!
- I was on this trip as part of my time with the Nordic Bloggers Experience!
What beautiful images. I was transported to Finland though I am yet to make my way there. I am eyeing the Finnish cups and the bag :)
A great post. I really want to go to Finland and never really considered venturing out the cities but now I will!
Let me know how it goes :)