Tarinat

October 31, 2016:
Pauliina and Sini arrived to Kuusiku Naturefarm for early evening on October 31 2016. After being accommodated in our B&B comfortable single rooms we had together a local food dinner, prepared by Kristiina. We shortly introduced our Kuusiku Naturefarm and discussed the visit plan, prepared by Sirje. We also provided our guests with the map of our Lahemaa region and bouclet of our sustainable tourism farms regional network www.ehedad.ee.

November 01:
After local food breakfast I went with Pauliina and Sini to the full day introduction tour around our Lahemaa region (parishes Kadrina and Vihula). We started in our Kadrina parish central library, where the manager Ene Heide showed us around two floors of the library building and introduced the activities they organize. Ene gave to our guests a gift in a form of a book „Tastes of Kadrina/Kadrina kandi maitsed“. We continued our tour to Kadrina parish office, where PR specialist Rein Sikk introduced the parish newspaper „Kodukant“ and parish manager Erich Petrovits greeted our guests together with Kadrina church minister Meelis-Lauri Erikson. After short visit to the Kadrina shop „Konsum“ we visited Pihlamäe farm museum and Tiiu’s handicraft room. I, Pauliina and Sini bought some handicraft from the hostess Tiiu Raidmaa. Then we moved to Vihula parish territory to Palmse manor tourism centre, www.rmk.ee, where we watched the video about Lahemaa National Park, visited the Palmse manor main building (museum), the Palm house and had a lunch in Palmse tavern. Then we continued to Altja fishemen village, Oandu Nature centre, Sagadi Forest Museum and Sagadi hotel (they showed us all type of hotel rooms and a new cellars as new seminar premises and sauna centre) and restaurant. We had dinner with discussions about the day at Sagadi restaurant. After returning to Kuusiku Naturefarm our guests had some relaxing time at our farm sauna.

November 02:
The morning surprised us with quite a bit snow outside. After the local food breakfast we went to our second day tour with Pauliina and Sini. We started nearby at Viitna tavern, where we looked into bistro and handicraft corner side of the tavern. Then we visited Artur Grill enterprise, where we looked to the menu and were showed the upstairs guestrooms. Next we made our captain village Käsmu tour and visited Käsmu Maritime private museum. The host Aarne Vaik made for us a tour around the museum building rooms with different expositions and very nice view to the Baltic Sea. Then we continued to Vihula manor, where the receptionist showed us the main building restaurant and different type of hotel rooms up to the Schubert suite. After that we had cup of tea and coffee there. Then we had to turn back to Kuusiku Naturefarm because Pauliina was not feeling well enough to continue to Arma riding farm. I had planned to have there a discussion together with their hostess Mare about our family based sustainable tourism farm network Genuine Experiences in Lahemaa, NGO KEEL. Arma and Kuusiku are both founders of this network back from 2005. I and Sini had a lunch at Lahemaa Kohvikann restaurant in Palmse village, while Pauliina had some rest. We both also bought some food products from this restaurant to take with.

After some rest at Kuusiku I made for our guests a tour around our different tourism linked farm buildings (summer guesthouse, sauna house guest room, under roof grill place, old store house guest room, fanny dry toilet building). Finally we had discussions about the visit and more widely about different subjects concerning tourism and client behaviour and dinner at Kuusiku Naturefarm diningroom. Pauliina and Sini said that this was their first visit to Lahemaa region and they are interested to explore more our region in the future.

November 03:
After the local food breakfast we cleaned together Pauliina’s car from snow and our guests started to drive back to Tallinn harbour.

Kristiina and I hope that our guests liked the places we showed them, they got new ideas and thoughts for their tuture developments and plans. We also decided together that From Kuusiku Naturefarm host Rein and older hostess Sirje will visit Majatalo Torppa and their region in May 02.-05.2017. Sirje forwarded to Pauliina some wishes about this future visit to Finland.

Kuusiku Naturefarm hostesses consider these few days with Finnish guests as a good possibility to concentrate to sustainable tourism subjects, target groups of us and to our region as seen from our guests point of view. We had good discussions and possibility to host two wonderful guests with real interest to us and towards our Lahemaa region as a tourism destination.

Good wishes to our guests, looking forward to the next spring visit to Kotka and Hamina region and further cooperation!

Kristiina & Sirje, hostesses

Kuusiku Naturefarm www.kuusikunaturefarm.ee
Hosts: family farm’s young hostess Kristiina Leego and old hostess Sirje Kuusik, contacts: kuusikufarm@gmail.com , +372 53 090 444; +372 51 53573

Majatalo Torppa www.majatalotorppa.com .

Guests: hostess Pauliina Lunna and young tourism student from Hamina Sini Vanhala, contacts: majatalo@majatalotorppa.com, +358 400 500 022, sinivanhala@icloud.com .

At the photos: views of Kuusiku Naturefarm – comfortable guest room in the main building, sauna house entrance room, view towards the main building and summer guest house, view into the garden. All photos about the visit were made by our guests and can be found in their report.