Visited Anjala Manor + Porvoo

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markkujantunen3.4 K2 years agoPeakD3 min read

Anjala Manor is on the river Kymi to some tens of kilometers to the south of the town of Kouvola. My wife had visited it a decade ago with her colleagues. At that time, there was a museum in the close to 400-year-old manor.

This is the main building.

There was no museum now.

There rooms on the second floor were empty except for a few pieces of furniture and some information.

It was a pity.

By the way, in 1973, one of the biggest heists in the country ever had taken place in the manor. Everything was taken. The loot, except for a couple of items of no particularly high value, was found at a sand pit in Nastola 65 km away but the perps were never caught.

A local art society used the first floor of the main building as an exhibition space for local artists whose works were there for sale.

The grain storage had been converted into a cafe.

This building had been converted into some sort of a community center. The manor and the lands were bought by the national government in 1907 and the lands were sold at a heavily discounted price to the tenant farmers who lived on them.

We went back to the main building to take a walk by the river.

On the opposite side was this beauty, Stora Enso cardboard mill.

Another power plant

I like the brick wall but those smoke stacks are brutal. On second thought, I like them, too, because they're brutal.

I wonder what the first owner of the manor and the lands, the widow of Henrik Wrede, Gertrud von Ungern would've thought her manor would be frequently used by commoners to play frisbee golf at. She'd have to be explained what frisbee golf is, of course. Henrik Wrede was a captain in the Swedish cavalry who saved Charles IX's life in the battle of Kircholm in the Polish-Swedish war in 1605. The king donated him 47 farms and several manors in the area.

One of the frisbee golfers after his round

We drove on to Porvoo via small roads in southern Kymenlaakso and then the motorway, which made our route home a little longer but not too much.

This is where the old town of Porvoo begins.

This is where my wife wanted to have dinner but the restaurant was closed.

These streets were as nice as I remembered them but I noticed that some of them could use a fresh coat of paint. This town is only about 50 km from Helsinki and quite touristic. Yet, Kristiinankaupunki in a much more remote location on the west coast was in better shape. Kokkola, which has a much bigger old town was in good condition, too.

We had dinner at that restaurant. My wife called her pizza the worst she'd ever had. My daughter's pizza was too salty. Mine was kind of ok but not worth the price. Their bread was fantastic. The the waitress asked if we liked our food, we told her our true opinion but less harshly. I did my best to be constructive. I guess the lesson here is that if you eat at a nice touristic location, you can't usually expect to get the best food for the price.