20120629 Helsinki Friday
Up at 0730 to see us entering port; dressed quickly and started taking pictures from the stateroom balcony. We came abreast of a fort & shot that. Then a tiny submarine came into view. I shot a bunch of pictures of it. Later in the day I found out it was one of five built in Finland in the 1930’s to a Dutch design and is now a museum. I’ll have to look up more on this one.
We docked right downtown, only two blocks from the busy market. The busses came and toted us away on schedule. First a driving tour of the peninsula on which the downtown part of the city sits and then to the Rock Church. This is a church carved out of the hillside granite close to downtown, then topped with a circular copper roof now turned green. Very interesting setting.
On then to Lapland (a huge building filled with snow and kept at -4*C. There are dog-sled tours to do, the bar serves Finlandia vodka in glasses made of ice, there are hotel rooms in igloos where the bedframes are ice and you sleep in big sleeping bags. We had a bunch of fun taking pictures of each other in our arctic gear floundering around in the snow.
Then we were transported to the main square, in front of the Lutheran Cathedral. I went up 50 steps and into it, and took a bunch of pictures many of which didn’t turn out. The church was beautiful in its simplicity. I bought the brochure for it to share with friends in PCB.
We walked from there the two blocks to the market square, where there were all sorts of tourist goodies on sale. We bought an animal for Jamie.
Then back on board the ship a block away. We grabbed a salad and hamburger at the burger-bar and had only begun eating when the others came along and joined us. We talked a bit. I went away to download pictures and had some problems, so I was still in the room when we got underway. We met shortly afterward for trivia (lost). Off then to the cabin to get into informal dress for dinner., then to the cocktail party for those who had purchased the trip through travel agents who belong to a certain association. It was interesting to meet some of them.
On to dinner, fine food, much wine, capped by a chocolate tower over mousse with a raspberry in the tower. Ooohh..
Since we loose another hour to time zones tonight and have to get up really early tomorrow, we elected to trudge off to bed. It’s now 2300 Russian time and time to go to bed even though the sun is still shining a few degrees above the north horizon.
Night-night
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