6 June 2017 / leggypeggy

Lappeenranta has unique food—the vety

food, fortresses, Lappeenranta, nature trail, sand, travel, walking

A view from the Pappilanniemi nature trail

Our first stop outside Helsinki was at a town called Lappeenranta on the shores of Lake Saimaa (the fourth largest lake in Europe) and only 30 kilometres from the Russian border. Not surprisingly, it is the second most visited Finnish city by Russian tourists.

We were excited to see signs promoting visa-free travel from Lappeenranta to St Petersburg, and were keen to see if we could manage at least a day-trip. We had originally booked to go to St Petersburg from Helsinki, but all the ferries were full. We were destined for disappointment yet again. Those trips (via the lake and canals) from Lappeenranta didn’t start up again until today, and we left Finland a couple of weeks ago.

But the city kept us well occupied. For starters, there is an old fortress.

Museum at the fortress

Lake Saimaa

Building

Entrance

Church

Shop

For centuries, Sweden–Finland and Russia fought each other. This fortress was built to protect the border and formed part of a chain of fortresses between Finland and northeastern Russia. Over the years, it was alternately held by the Swedes and the Russians.

Today it is a tourist destination, with shops, cafés, a museum, a church and parsonage, a commander’s house, and great views out over the lake (pictures above). Most places were closed because we were there on a Sunday, also Mother’s Day in Europe.

So after checking out the fortress, we headed down to the lake to enjoy the boats and buy lunch. We’d been told that we absolutely, positively had to try a vety (pronounced vetu) sandwich. Wow, these things are amazing. So much so that we had them two days in a row. They’re a sort of baked bread pouch filled with rice, ground beef, smoked ham, pickles, onions and more. I’ve started the hunt for a recipe.

The vety sandwich is found only in Lappenranta. Anyone have a recipe?

To walk off some of the calories, we spent a couple of hours walking to and from the Pappilanniemi nature trail on one end of town. The trail itself is only 1.8 kilometres long, but it took us ages to get there and back. On the way back to town, we cut across a golf course and were careful not to get clobbered by golf balls.

Lappeenranta offered up a few other unexpected treats. It has the country’s oldest still-existing wooden town hall, built in 1829.

Flower

View on Pappilanniemi nature trail

Flower

It’s also where breakfast included frozen yoghurt and those delightful tins with moomin designs (click through and scroll down to see the pic). A woman at the hotel guided us to a secondhand shop where I bought two moomin mugs. Hope I can get them home without breaking off the handles. For the moment, both are shrouded in bubble wrap. Will show them off when I get home.

A woman in the tourist office also directed us to two other great tourist spots—the concrete sculpture park I’ve already written about here and a museum of mechanical instruments (coming soon). It’s also where I bought my first Finnish beers.

All in all, Lappeenranta was a great start to our driving holiday around Finland. By the way, the town is also famous for an annual giant sand sculpture, but that wasn’t going to be completed until this month. We did, however, see the pile of sand. 🙂