Luoma Things to Do

My favourite piece of furniture in Hvitträsk was this desk. It was designed and built by Saarinen himself. If I had a desk like this I would work all day and night probably, I think it's so gorgeous. The chair doesn't look suitable though to spend hours in front of the computer ;)

Hvitträsk is overlooking Lake Vitträsk. In my travel book it was called the white lake. When I asked Kimmo whether it was really white he answered "In winter, yes". HAHA. Oh well, it was summer when we were here but the lake was still quite white... probably because of the heavy rain! Around the lake there are some small cliffs and I am sure that it would be wonderful to go to sauna and jump into the lake here if the weather was nice. Not sure if you can if you are not a celebrity though....

At Lake Vitträsk there's a sauna of course - we are in Finland after all ;) It's in a nice log building. I liked the stairs here which are not very straight ;)

Michael Palin went to sauna here when he was on his Pole to Pole trip. Can you remember how he jumped naked into a lake? That was here!

There are beautiful gardens around Hvitträsk. Because it was raining heavily when we were here we only passed through them to get to the lake. On the way down to the lake you walk about 130 steps down through a forest. I bet it's even nicer on a sunny day.

From the balcony you get a first view of the huge gardens around Hvitträsk as well as the roof of course. By the time we were here a herd of terrible American cruise tourists had taken over Hvitträsk (we had been basically on our own before they arrived) so we tried to escape quickly and unnoticed ;)

The logs that the house was built of are inside the building as well. Unfortunately it's quite dark in most rooms on the ground level so this picture doesn't really do justice to the beauty of the building.

This is the library of Hvitträsk. It's the first room you enter when visiting the museum. As far as I remember this room originally used to be a billiards room. In the shelves are original books of Eliel Saarinen as well as other old architecture books.

Can you imagine growing up playing in such a room? For me this wouldn't have been the real thing I guess - I think I preferred my lego and matchbox cars ;)