For those who don't know, she is my Canadian exchange student friend from my Taiwan year. We went to the same school and had some pretty awesome adventures together throughout the year.
♥
She is currently studying in Uppsala, Sweden, (which happens to be kinda close to Finland) and decided to come for a visit during Easter. We had an amazing week together and visited many places, cooked Taiwanese food and skyped some old friends. It was kinda amazing to meet after almost three years and think back to our time in Taiwan. I thought it would be nice to write a post about our Finland adventures here on my blog.
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Her flight was on Wednesday but I still had a lecture in the morning so my dad picked her up from the airport.The first evening kinda went by really fast while talking. We had Taiwanese noodles for evening snack~~
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Thursday was a rainy day and we didn't have any big plans so we decided to drive to Lahti, which is a bigger city next to my home town, and look around. We also watched a movie called You're the apple of my eye, which is a funny Taiwanese movie that came out the same year we were in Taiwan. In the evening we baked a blueberry pie :>
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On Friday we headed for Helsinki. My dad was going to visit my cousin and some friends so before that he gave us a mini tour of the harbor and some famous places and then dropped us of at the flea market that we were planning to visit. We were shocked by the long line they had but luckily it didn't take that long to get in.
We found some pretty great pieces from the market and were quite excited about it haha
Metrilakua!
(Meter liquorice, a very Finnish candy that they sell on the market usually in the summer and it's one meter long haha)
We took the tram to the center and walked along the riverside. We saw the opera house, the Finlandia house, the parliament house and a lot of other places on our way. We decided to grab something to eat, which turned out to be quite a mission with our budget as Finland is quite expensive foodwise. Also the fact that it was Good Friday and some places were closed made finding a place to eat even harder.
At the end we had to get something from a nice coffee shop first because we were getting so hungry.We had some plans to walk around in the center but it was getting cold and starting to rain so we just decided to go to one of my favorite restaurants and share a pizza. We sat there quite a while talking and eating. The pizza was amazing~
BBQ chicken with fresh mozzarella, blue cheese, pineapple and pepper~
After eating we had to take a bus to my cousins house to meet my dad as I had promised to drive us back home. It was scary because I wasn't sure which bus to take or where to hop off the bus, but we survived haha. My dad wasn't ready to leave yet so we just sat there and chatted and got to taste some dessert that they had made. (They had had a 'manly cooking day' :D)
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On Saturday we also headed to Helsinki. We first ate some lunch at Japanese restaurant and the visited a few Asian markets in the center with my parents.
拉麵 ♥
We found some snacks that we used to eat in Taiwan
Then my dad dropped us of at the center where we were supposed to go get bubble tea but, unfortunately, the cafe was closed. We visited the Ateljee cafe in the highest building in Helsinki and the view was really nice. (We didn't actually go all the way up because we didn't wanna buy anything :D)
It was a cold day but we still decided to walk to the Temppeliaukio church. It's build into rock.
From there we headed to the opposite direction to go see the Helsinki Cathedral and Senate Square.
It was getting really cold so we decided to take the train to Espoo to go meet my parents (they had gone to a housewarming party of some friends). They had promised to save some food for us and so we got to eat Karelian pies and other yummy stuff haha.
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Sunday was a lazy day because we both had to take some time to do our homework and then we (my dad :D) cooked 牛肉麵 aka beef noodle soup.
It doesn't look like soup because I don't like the actual soup that much :D
We also skyped Aoi, who was a Japanese exchange student in our school in Taiwan. It was nice to talk to her after three years of not being in contact at all~
In the evening we visited my grandma and ate some bread cheese with cloudberries and cream.
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Later that day we cooked Finnish style sukiyaki or hotpot, which ever you wanna call it, and it was delicious.
We skyped with Minyun and her family ♥
And made some bubble tea with tiny pink bubbles :D
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On Tuesday I had classes so we had to drive to Joutseno, where my school is, and back. The day was rainy so we didn't do much else. On Wednesday we drove Gillian back to the airport really early and send her off back to Sweden.
It was an amazing week and I was so glad to see Gillian again ♥
Hopefully we will have some new adventures together in the future too (maybe even in Taiwan :D)
P.s.
After I got home from the airport and took a nap someone took over Gillian's bed :D
