Welcome to Satakunta: Things to do in Pori
This is the third part of a series of texts inspired by my dear friend Vibeke and her daughter, who will pay us back a visit next summer. The focus will be on laid-back family travelling, but some of the ideas are applicable to other kinds of people as well. Welcome to Satakunta! (Here are parts one and two.)
There are loads of things for kids and their parents to see and do in Pori, and most are free or very inexpensive. I’ll start off with the two places you shouldn’t miss.
1. Kirjurinluoto (a scribe’s isle, if you will, or: the isle of scribe!) and Pelle Hermannin puisto (Hermanni the Clown’s Playground)
This is a treasure. Pori is much like Paris: we have a river running through the town and a church right there on the bank, plus citizens of both Pori and Paris tend to leave the last letters of words unpronounced (ones leave out vowels, others leave out consonants – even the names sound alike: [pori] and [pari:], don’t you think?!). But although Paris is filled with beautiful little parks, they do not have a complete set of isles right in the centre of everything for recreational use only.
Kirjurinluoto has a huge playground, where kids of various ages easily spend a few hours (pictures here). There are also birds, like peacocks and hens, and goats and alpacas to see. And their own mascot, Viksu Mustavaris, or Savvy Rook (that’s my translation – I don’t know why the bird is called Viksu, or smart, but the rook part comes from that species being quite common in Pori and in Satakunta although it is quite rare in other parts of Finland). And a traffic town. And a beach. And some jogging routes. And a gardening information centre. And an outdoor theatre. And a few stages for musical performances, because there is the huge Pori Jazz Festival every year in July and that too takes place in Kirjurinluoto. If you want to take a break, you can buy a ticket and hop on Poritar, the little sightseeing train that will bring you back after an hour.
You can bring your own picnic or buy snacks or ice cream from the café or the kiosks. There are also proper toilets, with changing tables, for public use, which is brilliant.
2. Yyteri Beach
The name Yyteri derives from Swedish Ytterö (se här om du är intresserad av ortnamn i Finland, jag i alla fall är fascinerad – it’s an article about place names where Finnish and Swedish have been beautifully combined) which means ’an outer island’. That was before the land had risen enough to poach the islands along the coast into a cape. The beach is located a good 15 kilometres from the town. You could ride a bike, the route is good, but most people go by car. The parking lot is clogged on beautiful summer days. There is a bus route too, but for a reason unintelligible to me the town has not marked the Yyteri buses with flags and huge photos of the beach. Not even the locals know which route it is. I’ll let you in on the secret: number 32.
The Guardian just nominated Yyteri as one of the top 10 beaches in Europe. The article states that the facilities are ”low-key”, which is a pretty way of saying ”non-existent from a modern person’s point of view”, but as long as you’re prepared it’s plain sympathetic (ou bien sympa si on maintien l’opinion où les Porians et les Parisiens sont pareils) in an old-fashioned kind of way. Bring everything you need and please take your belongings and garbage away with you, as the dunes are a part of a nature conservation area.
3. Nature in general
There’s all sorts and all of it is very close. My favourite is Porin metsä (Pori woods) (the legandary title of the most unimaginative Finnish town regarding place names belongs to Lahti, however: Lahti = bay is situated next to Vesijärvi = water lake). The people who are into birds and bugs love the Kokemäenjoki estuary. In my opinion you don’t even have to leave the town centre, because you can take a walk along the river banks or the boulevards crossing the centre, or Viikkari and Kuukkari, or any other part of the town where the houses are made of wood and have cute little gardens.
4. Museums
Pori Art Museum hosts workshops and special tours for children. The Ark Nature Centre contains an engaging exhibition on local flora and fauna. In the Korsman House you get to visit a family in the 1950s and see how they lived. The Rosenlew Museum gives you an idea on how and why Pori became what it is now and flaunts a vast display of objects, household stuff and agricultural items and ship things – you name it, thay’ve got it. And it was all made in Pori. There are small entrance fees but they won’t break your budget.
5. Shopping
If you do want to break your budget or need to buy a souvenir the shops can be found at a) the Yrjönkatu pedestrian area, b) the IsoKarhu shopping centre right along Yrjönkatu and c) the Puuvilla shopping centre on the north bank of river Kokemäenjoki, right next to Kirjurinluoto. I would have added some links, but funnily enough none of the mentioned consortiums seem to serve other than Finnish-speaking customers, as I could find no information in English, let alone Swedish or some other language.
6. Angry Birds
Did you know that the Angry Birds come from Finland? (Check the video if you want to know more.) And did you know that one of the creators of Angry Birds was born and raised in Pori? And did you know that the first urban Angry Birds activity park in the world was opened at Pori market square in the summer of 2012? Well, now you know. You can climb with the birds and the pigs also at Kirjurinluoto and in Yyteri.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=aexkcxJ0KdU