Well we’re home from our long adventure through Scandinavia, though we almost didn’t come home at all. You see, we were under the impression that we had one more day left in Helsinki. The last three days before were the mid summer holiday which means all of the stores and most of the restaurants are closed with rarely any exceptions. For the locals it’s an amazing thing, everyone goes out to the country and has a great time, leaving tourists walking around aimlessly looking for some food like zombies. At some point during the holiday we made our brains think that we had one more day, which equaled one more day of thrifting since Monday all the stores were back to being open.

We found out about the flight literally the night before. We were looking online to see if we could change our seats (we always have the worst luck with seating) for the dreadfully long journey home and we noticed that our flight wasn’t in 2 days, it was the next day! We got up early and with an hour to spare we went over to the Helsinki open market and got some seriously good finds. Enjoy!

This was a pretty big deal for us, as we’ve always talked about the Antti Nurmesniemi coffee pot (designed in 1957) and how much we’d love to have one, but the prices were always way out of our range. At the Helsinki market we passed by a pretty neat booth carrying a lot of Arabia and Iittala design objects. It was all good stuff but priced at market value and I was looking for the DEALZ. So I left the booth in search of more affordable bounty. While we were scrambling  to get back to our hotel to catch the cab that was waiting for us, I decided to take one last look at the booth, noticing that people were still bringing things out. It was right there, big, red and beautiful and I asked “How much for the coffee pot” and the man who spoke pretty decent English told me it was 80 euros. Now 80 euros is not a bad price, considering these can sell for over $350 on Ebay but I just can’t spend that much on a coffee pot that I don’t even know how to use. I said 50, and he said that 50 was too low and he was firm on 80. So I just studied it for a while and put it down and just like that, he told me I could take it for 65 e, and I happily handed over the money.

Two Arabia planters for 16 euros? Yes please! We already have the large pot at home and now we have one in each size.

This Finnish medicine cabinet was fate and I don’t even know how it survived the trip home. I was looking for a medicine cabinet for the bathroom at the cottage, and we finally found one at the very last booth we visited in Helsinki. The red cross caught my eye right away, it was being sold for 10 euro, which was a great price but this is an awkward metal cabinet and I have to catch a flight. If I was going to have to haul this all the way home, I wanted a MEGA DEAL and all I had left in my pocket was 6 euros. So I had to do a little charming to get them to come down in price—I told them I was from Canada and I was interested in the cabinet, but didn’t know if it was worth having to haul it home. The second Scandinavians find out you’re from Canada something changes in their voice, they get a bit more friendlier. She said if it was going all the way to Canada she’d let it go for 6. Thank god. So now I have to walk back to the hotel with this heavy medicine cabinet under my arm to the awaiting taxi, but I didn’t mind at all. Fast forward: we make it to the airport and it turns out the cabinet is too “big” to go in the overhead compartment, this means I have to put it under the airplane with no protection except a garbage bag. The thrift was too good to be true and I had to accept that the cabinet was going to be manhandled to death. Long story short, it survived! I can’t wait until we start working on the bathroom so I can hang it up.

When we got home we had the chance to take some pictures of the more fragile things we got on the trip that we didn’t feel like unwrapping to photograph in the craziness of travel.

Our Kay Bojesen Danish soldier stands tall next to his heart windowed cardboard home. I bought him from a duty free shop on an overnight ferry from Copenhagen to Oslo. He was a bit less than $80 Canadian.

Yours & Mine cups were bought from a small ceramics shop in Copenhagen. Stilleben sells a lot of product made by local young artisans.

The other side of the cups.

Pia Wallen slippers from Sweden in our usual colour scheme. We’ve been wearing these around our hotels and they’ve been fab.

So that’s about it for our Scandinavian adventures (this time), though we’ve saved a couple of surprises for the big cottage reno reveal.