Porvoo & Baking

In February, I went to Porvoo one Saturday because my host brother had a hockey game there.

I ended up walking from the hockey center and going to the old city of Porvoo on my own. It was quite nice to see the city again, because the last time I had been there was way back when it was still fall and now it was wintertime. I crossed over one bridge to get to the main part of the city and there were about 15 different people ice hole fishing in the river. It may be a bit hard to see in this picture, but that's what the black specks are.

I walked through the streets of the old town and looked in a few shops. They have some nice souvenir, handycraft, and specialty shops, including one of the Brumberg candy company stores. This is a picture of the old town hall (the pink building), which is now known as the Porvoon museo.

I ended up going to the Porvoon museo while I had a bit of time there. It was really nice and included two different buildings with a few different exhibits. In the old town hall, there was an exhibit on the history and nature of the area, glass art, paintings, old artifacts and toys, etc.
The art exhibt covered a bit of the first floor and the entire second floor and had lots of great pieces of artwork by all sorts of famous Finnish artists. I was one of the only people in the museum at the time and was a bit afraid while I was on the second floor. Not because I was alone, but because it was so old that the wooden floors were a bit uneven and creaky and I was afraid I was going to fall through the floor.

I went to the other building afterwards, which was a house that one of the nobles had built and lived in. This isn't actually a picture of that museum, because that building was directly across the square from these buildings. It was also a nice museum. Porvoo is one of the oldest cities in Finland, so there is a lot of history there.

Looking down one of the streets. At the end is the candy store. I had a couple hours of wandering around in the city which was very nice.

Back at home, I learned how to bake porkannasämpylä which translates to a carrot roll. It doesn't really taste like carrot though so not to worry, it is just a nice bread roll.

It is fairly easy to make, all you need is shredded carrot and the usual ingrediants for breadmaking. Unfortunately I don't have the instructions infront of me and it was so long ago, so I can't write how to make this.

It was very tasty and quite healthy too, so hopefully I can also make it back in the US for everyone to have and maybe I will post the recipe later on if I can find it.