Finland Day 2

It was a 'free day' until we were bussed into Savonlinna late in the afternoon so the OH and I walked into the local small town of Kerimaki, whose main claim to fame is that it plays host to the biggest wooden church in Europe. It may be the biggest wooden church in the world, but I'm not 100% sure, so I'm sticking with Europe which is firmer ground. Either way it is impressive. 

There's also this separate little tower thing; - no, not a clue! 

I'm a sucker for ecclesiastical textiles, also Finnish design, so obviously three was a picture taken of this cloth on the font.

And there were beautiful chandeliers; and yes, it is a wooden church, and yes, those are real candles and yes they do get lit. Only at special services though, like Christmas. Accident waiting to happen? you would think so. 

With my well known predilection for graveyards it's not surprising we visited the one in Kerimaki. These are the markers for the local men who dies in the Winter war. ...

...and this is the memorial to them. 

In the afternoon we were taken into Savonlinna. This was billed as a chance to look round the town and get something to eat. There really was very little time between getting off the bus and needing to make our way to the castle for the evening's performance, also we weren't very hungry as it wasn't that long since lunch. We bought one of these each in a small open air cafe near the market. They're a  local delicacy which I can't spell, but basically it's  a flat doughnut type thing with a filling. They do all sorts of fillings; we had apple. 

We did find time to go to a shop which I'd seen advertised in  a local tourist type brochure.  That's the one that turned out to have the yarn. I bought myself a pair of socks there as I had discovered that in amongst all my carefully selected packing for the trip I seemed to have missed socks off the list, and promised the assistant a return visit the next day. Of which more later. Meanwhile, back on day 2 ....

it was off to the castle for the first performance we were to see. This was Gounod's Romeo and Juliet. We'd never seen it before, and it got off to a slow start, hampered I feel by the director's concept of staging it in early C20 New York amongst Italian immigrant families and setting it in a vaudeville theatre. He should just have gone full Mafia if that was what he wanted rather than this rather half hearted, early versus later immigrant thing he had going. That said, once the singers got warmed up they were very good indeed, and the orchestra was excellent - and remained so all week.  

Set

Curtain Call