Card no 410 – Eeva
A summer night in Helsinki
Country Card Sent From: Finland
Place Card Sender Lives: Espoo
Date Received: 21st February 2013
Distance Travelled: 1,145 miles
Time Taken: 3 days
A
summer night on Kaivopuisto with Harakka Island in the background.
Kaivopuisto is one of
the oldest and best known parks in central Helsinki, Finland, and also a
neighbourhood of about 500 inhabitants where the park is located. To the south,
Kaivopuisto borders the Gulf of Finland. To the north is a residential area
containing the official private residences of several ambassadors of foreign
countries to Finland, including the United States, Estonia, Spain, France, the
Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.
Kaivopuisto offers
several hectares of parks, both on flat ground, and on cliffs. The park also
includes traces of stone fortifications built in the 18th century. Every
summer, thousands of Helsinkians come to Kaivopuisto to sunbathe, to have
picnics, or to hold sport. The largest hill in the park is a favoured slope for
tobogganing during the winter.
The Harakka
("Magpie") island is located off the coast of Helsinki where the
peninsula of Helsinki reaches far into the Baltic sea.It is a Nature Centre
whose facilities include barracks built by the Russians in 1908. Gardens, old
enbankments, rocky fields, seashore meadows and little marshes provide a
variety of habitats that allow biodiversity incomparable in the Helsinki
archipelago.
Despite the polar bears on the stamp Eeva told me it had been mild this winter - though with plenty of snow,
