Saimaa Canal

We took a small two-hour cruise to Saimaa Canal on Friday with my sister's family. It was something I wanted to do before me move away from Lappeenranta and visitors are always a good reason to act like turists. It really was worth going!
We made the cruise on m/s Camilla which you see above. The cruise took two hours and we went through the first lock of the Saimaa Canal. The lock is called Mälkiä. It's the deepest of the locks in Saimaa Canal (12,4m). All together there are eight locks in Saimaa Canal. Three of them are on Finnish side and the rest are in Russia. You can get to the Gulf of Finland from the lake Saimaa through the Canal. It would be interesting to go the route all the way some day.
Here we go:


At the bottom:
On the other side of Mälkiä lock. Can you see the sea gulls who came to have lunch?Then just a quick turn and back to the lock. El Faro followed us.



Up we go again:



Can you see the difference in water levels? It's amazing what people invent in order to get where they want. So simple and yet working so well.

There was a little queue to the lock:



On our way back we passed the Kaukas paper mill. Such a big contrary to those beautiful views of Lake Saimaa. Yet I find it very intriguing. The big mills and buildings impress me. Here you see only a part of the whole mill area. Finland is very dependend of its paper production and I guess they are doing their best fo the environment, hopefully!
I think Juha (my hubby) was to one who enjoyed the cruise most.