Lady Hamilton 2019

HANKO

Day 61  Wednesday, 31^st July 2019

Had a leisurely breakfast – toast and Jackson’s marmalade from the butchers down in Ruswarp.  I blogged most of the morning about the last two days, from Helsinki to Hanko.  The skipper went for fuel, scrubbed the decks and the waterline – a very busy skipper!

In the afternoon we went to see the Tsarist villas – they were quite extraordinarily beautiful.  Most have been turned into B & B’s, hotels or restaurants. 

This is the one recommended in Lonely Planet (Scandinavia): Villa Maija, built in 1888.

We loved this maypole with yachts on the top, and it’s on the beach too. 

Walked up a hill to the Water Tower which we could see sailing in yesterday.  It’s 48 m tall and sits 65 m above sea level.

It has a lift inside, going up to the 4^th floor.  We talked to some people in the short queue for the lift – a Finnish lady who spoke to her daughter in Swedish, but she answered in English as she went to school in England!  She also told me that many Finns (approx. 300,000) had emigrated between 1880 and 1930 to the US, Canada and Australasia from Hanko.  She showed me the place where they stayed before emigrating, it’s now a hotel – it’s the blue building in the middle of the picture.

This is where we came from yesterday.

And you can almost see our boat in the harbour!  The island harbour you can see in the distance.

The water tower has had a varied history.  Originally it was a wooden tower in 1886, then a granite tower in 1910.  But the Soviet Union troops leaving Hanko in 1941 had burst the tank in the water tower.  As water distribution was an essential element for the citizens to move back to Hanko, they quickly built a new one, starting plans the very next year.  It was originally painted grey – you wouldn’t have been able to see it from the sea – so it was repainted in a reddish colour. 

You can also see the church from far out to sea.  The church is next to the water tower so we had to go inside – we do love churches!  This has a balcony like St. Mary’s in Whitby.

After that we walked to the supermarket and stocked up – they even had Knorr stock cubes!  I saw this doormat and cushion on the way back – love the thought!

There was market on the quayside so I bought vegetables there, and Finnish raspberries!

We went to look at restaurants on the quayside but they are so expensive, even the pizza restaurants.  The euro is only slightly less than a pound now.  So we went for showers and got a Thai takeaway from a van on the quay and ate it in our cockpit on the table.  Played Elton John until the live music performed on the quayside started .  After that we watched two episodes of Mad Men – last episode of Series 4 tomorrow!