My travel tips 🙂

The best place to begin your trip to Kuusisto Bishop’s Castle Ruins would be Kauppatori (the Market Place in Turku). You can visit Folï’s website http://www.foli.fi/en which will give you the travel time for the bus. Personally, I took it up to Oskarinaukio and then the bus K2 to Kuusisto. Guess what, the first bus was 4 minutes late, the next one 1 minute early, so I missed it and had to wait one hour!

Little piece of advice if you don’t feel like walking a few hours after your visit:  don’t go to Kuusisto too late in the day, knowing that the last K2 bus to come back to Oskarinaukio is at 16:10 and that the main road is a few kilometers away 😀 . 

One more thing, I also missed the bus stop of Kuusisto castle! There are no indications, just a parking lot with a little blue sign, and I didn’t know it was THIS parking where I had to get off the bus…! I realized it when the driver did a U-turn, after a few minutes I asked him when we would arrive at Kuusisto and a bit surprised, he answered I had just missed it… So I asked him if I could stay in the same bus and wait for the next turn. Not that bad, I’ve seen other beautiful Finnish landscapes, but I was still wondering if I would arrive one day at Kuusisto… 🙂 Once you are in the parking lot, just follow the street up to the ruins, you will enjoy a beautiful sunflower field and an incredible view.

 

As a foreigner who doesn’t know the city and wishes to go to Kuusisto, I think it’s better to ask the driver to inform you when you have to get off the bus, so that you won’t miss the right bus stop! 😉

Last thing, don’t hesitate to bring your picnic, there’s a table placed near the water under the trees, lovely!

A few words about the castle’s ruins

Beautiful, believe me! I found this place really peaceful, which hasn’t always been the case given the place’s history. The castle’s surroundings are amazing and you can just sit and enjoy the natural setting for hours.

There are two signs with little information in English. It talks a bit about the history of the place, but it doesn’t help you to imagine how it used to look before. You see beautiful ruins in a beautiful setting, that’s true, but you can’t really feel involved in what happened to this place. That’s why the Lights on! Project exists, it will enhance this still unknown site and highlight its long and fascinating history. For that purpose, different ways of interpretation will be used, including augmented reality techniques! But in the meantime, be prepared and bring your own source of information 😉 .

This was my trip to Kuusisto. My next post will be about the Vallisaari fortress, located on an island near Helsinki, don’t miss it! 🙂