Day #7.......

PORI TO.......

RAUMA TO.........

RAUMA, THE HANDMADE LACE CAPITAL OF ALL FINLAND!!

My goal in Rauma was to see how the Finns make this gorgeous HANDMADE LACE they are famous for!! We were not disappointed at all.

But, FIRST, we drove from Pori this morning down here to Rauma...a mere 45 minute drive. We knew we wanted to have a good full day here in Rauma to take our time and walk in the old city and look at the handmade lace. On the way in to town we went by the Rauma Ward so we could see the building and it's location. Very nice building!! In a very nice family community.

On to the OLD TOWN of Rauma. This lady was making lace in a local museum. We were so lucky that she was there. I really, really wanted to see how the lace was made. This particular project she is working on ....... she is using 32 bobbins!!! I know because I counted them myself! She has two other projects (of which you can kind of see in the background) she is working on....one of them is using 50 bobbins. Crazy stuff!! Just amazing. The lace table runner we bought was so worth the money!! Without question!!

Here is a closer look at the lace she is making. You can see the pattern (of paper) underneath.

She belongs to a HandMade Lace Club here in Rauma. There are over 300 people who are members, including ONE lone man!!

When we left the museum we walked some more around the old town. There is a statue recognizing the great artist who do this work......I got as close to the statue as I could......holding a piece of lace I bought. The snow was pretty deep and I just couldn't get any closer.

As we were walking around we came across this big, beautiful old (actually built in 1813, so almost 200 years old) Holy Cross Lutheran Church. The door was unlocked so we decided to go in. We thought we saw a lady sitting in a pew about half way down reading a book. Upon closer examination we realized that the 'lady' turned out to be a statue of a lady sitting in the pew!! How clever....and how real it looked from behind!!

Back out walking again......just a great old city.....with more than 600 of these small wooden homes. I believe this is FINLAND'S LARGEST OLD WOODEN HOMES COMMUNITY anywhere in the country!

After walking around for about 6 hours we were pooped!! We decided it was time to sit down and have a nice dinner......and it was very good.....at this little restaurant.

And Wayne sure enjoyed his meal.....as did I. We discovered, when we came out of the restaurant, that we were only 1/2 block from our hotelli!!! AAAHHH.....that was a total surprise and we were ready for it!

Tomorrow.....we drive through Turku (where we will stop for a few hours and check out the ship building business there) and on down into Espoo and HOME SWEET ASUNTOLA HOME!!

What a wonderful 8 day trip this will have been. The weather has cooperated so well for us. We even think there might be a little, oh-so-tiny hint of SPRING in the air.