Visited Oulu and Hailuoto

I visited Oulu last weekend, to meet a few acquitances, reunite with my family — Sanna and boys were in Taivalkoski for a wekk — and attend a wedding in Hailuoto.

I ran through various activities on Friday; meeting people and developing some customer HTML in the hotel room, to name a few. I had some time to visit the shops in Rotuaari, found one book and the giant Lego Technic mobile crane that I’ve been craving for (for Aapo, of course) since last Father’s Day. Didn’t get permission to buy it, though.

The hotel room was equipped with sauna, so I spent some time in rather slowly heating sauna room and then lounged in the sitting area — a generic tip for people visiting Finland: check whether you can get a sauna room in Sokos Hotel. They cost about 10-20 euros more, but are more spacious with sitting space and of course they’ve got sauna.

Saturday, Sanna and Niilo joined me in Oulu and we prepared us to wedding taking place in Hailuoto — an island about 50 kilometers away from Oulu. The ferry departs once an hour or once every 90 minutes, so we hurried down to the pier not to miss it.

We were tenth in the queue and the ferry takes 50, so no problems. There was one later ferry that we could have used and still be on time, so we had plenty of time to explore the island.

Time has been relatively still there. The main village was small and distributed, and suddenly we had driven past it. The wedding party was in the western tip of the island, about 30 kilometers from the ferry. We spent our time there, had a cup of coffee in a smallish café near the shore, and finally found our way back to church.

I was named as the main photographer and fortunately I was able to shoot some decent frames in the ceremony and the party.

The island itself is quite beautiful by itself and I found myself drawn towards the nature many times during the evening. Not that the party was dull or anything, but the light was just so magnificent, as you can probably see from these images.

We left the island on the second to last ferry and were back in hotel half an hour before midnight.

Next morning, Aapo was brought to Oulu by grandparents and we started our journey to south. That took the whole day, and as usual with children, the trip was not exactly quiet or eventless. We were finally at home around seven o’clock, after eight and half hour drive.