Helsinki!

August 4, 2012

Helsinki

Woke up to a total pea-soup fog outside the window. “Dreary” does not really fully describe the bleakness of the morning. The very thought of wandering around a city all day in weather like that was rather unappetizing.

Add to this our rather dour tour guide for the morning, I wasn’t getting a real good feeling about Helsinki.

To say that our tour guide’s enthusiasm was underwhelming would be putting in mildly. Thank goodness the tour was only a couple of hours. I could not imagine listening to her listless descriptions all day long.

Our first stop was the Senate Square with the Lutheran Cathedral (didn’t realize there could be such a thing as a Lutheran Cathedral, as opposed to a Catholic Cathedral). Parked directly in front of the church, we could see the 53 steps leading up to the entrance. The tour guide vaguely mentioned that “the steps on the left side are much lower”, but I didn’t really understand what that meant. Looking at the left side of the entrance, I didn’t see anything other than 53 steps:

So, Andy went up the 53 steps and started taking photos inside the church. For whatever reason, I decided to walk around the corner. And there, on the left entrance of the church, was a flight of 10 steps followed by a ramp up to the church entrance. Ah hah. A few minutes later, I found Andy in the church.

After all the highly decorated Russian Orthodox churches in St Petersburg, this church was very simple, belying the bright colors on the outside of the domes.

Another thing the tour guide failed to mention? Access to bathrooms – for a fee of course, but at least they were there.

Our second stop was a memorial (?) to Sibelius:

Our last stop was the Temppeliaukio Churck (A/k/a the “church in the rock):

Fortunately, shortly after the church in the rock the bus took us to the city center, where we were able to get off before it headed back to the ship. Just being out of the Ms Lethargy’s presence made the day seem brighter.

After orienting ourselves, we walked to the Esplanada park and continued down to the Russian Orthodox Upensky Cathedral:

A short walk from the church was the open air market – lots of interesting crafts and food. Not every vendor took credit cards, and we were rapidly running out of Euros. Our search for an ATM machine brought us to the restaurant where we decided to have lunch – reindeer and mashed potatoes! Dunno, reindeer pretty much tasted like beef to me.

With our cash supply replenished, we returned to the market. Our persistence was rewarded when we found a vendor selling – ceramic elephants! The vendor was also the artist who made them. She explained the technique she used to produce the shimmering colors (Ruca? Rooka?), unfortunately totally lost on me. All I know is I really like the end results!

By now the skies had cleared completely and it was a gorgeous day. We wandered around aimlessly for a bit, sat in Esplanada for a bit (and enjoyed the free wi-fi courtesy of the Angry Bird network), then wandered around for a bit more. We stumbled across the Senate Square (our fist stop in the morning). The church looks quite a bit different in the bright sunlight, doesn't it?:

Eventually we started our trek back to the ship. Took just about an hour (give or take a few minutes), wandering past street performers and shops until we were beyond the city center and the “tourist zone”.

The last thing of note was this store sign:

This store sure did not look like the Nordstrom’s I know.

Though off to a slow start, it still finished as a highly successful day!

Tomorrow -  Day At Sea.