A summer night in Finland

Card no 410 – Eeva

A summer night in Helsinki

Country Card Sent From: Finland

Place Card Sender Lives: Espoo

Date Received: 21^st 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,