... and that was Helsinki ...

Day 6 Helsinki to London

3 days of clear blue skies, day temps in the high teens and glistening seas surrounding beautiful bays and tiny islands. I am assured Helsinki is not always like this. 

What I will remember about this city is how the cars and bicycles share the road respectfully, how great their trams are and, when Jack's legs allowed it, how easy it is to walk anywhere. The Finns amazed me with how quickly they could switch from Finnish to English without thinking almost and how they had no issue with a family of 5 with no no other language skills apart from English. 

The Finland wrap highlights:

Jack - sweet buns (at the Engel cafe this morning) and the Sibelius monument

Grace - cinnamon scrolls and the bus tour on the double decker bus

Lily - mango and passion fruit sorbet (from the plaster lady) and the bus tour

Al - the salmon from the harbour street stalls and wandering the old town design area

David - apple donuts and the food markets

Big thanks to Mark and Jacki for suggesting we start our adventure in Helsinki

Julia...please note that Al will have edited this first. 

Now for Heathrow and Legoland (who suggested that??)

(David)

... when we found skellington ...

Day 6 - Helsinki

Today we walked and walked for ages and we also went to five diffrent playgrounds. 

Lily, Jack and I played a following game. Later we found a skeleton on one of the playground fences.    We named him Skellington.  We are going to use him in some of our photos.

Jack cut his finger while opening a gate. We didn't have anything to put on it and we asked the lady at the ice cream stand if she had bandaid and she didn't know what that was - but she gave us what she called a plaster....same thing!  We all had ice cream I got a puffet but I swapped it with dad because I thought his tasted better.  On the way back mum kept sitting us on a wall to take photographs.  

In the last picture you can see that we had waffles, strawberries and cream for lunch. But dad had possumunki donut (minced meat in a donut) - none of us liked it much.

(Grace)

...Helsinki ...

Day 5 - Helsinki 

We arrived after 32 hours or so of travelling (consensus - not nearly as bad as we thought it would be)

Driving from the airport I felt like we were part of a Kurt Wallander novel (wrong country I know...but all those sleepless travel hours...)

Brilliant blue skies, bare branched trees, little sign (yet) of spring.

Easter Monday is never a good time to arrive anywhere (ref - David and I arriving in Bologna on the same day 17 years ago and just sitting in the sunshine in the square for hours because everything was shut) but Helsinki is way more open than Hobart.

We found the best cinnamon scrolls, good coffee and headed onwards.

Wandering around the boulevards, promenades and cobbled streets, round the harbour area, avoiding the reindeer meatballs but loving the salmon.  

We hopped on a bus tour as little legs started failing and marvelled at the crazy Russian woman who took 4000 or so phone photos from a moving bus and almost lost her head from the branches every time she stood up, the rock church (see Jack's previous post for a detailed description of this church carved from the rock face) and the Sibelius monument - which was not as musical as we'd hoped.

Our apartment is fabulous - all clean Scandi lines and minimal white furnishings - and loads of hot water and free wifi.  Today we're heading out in search of food, open shops and some playgrounds.

We'll see what happens.

(Alison)

....the rock church ...

Day 5 - Helsinki 

I went on a double decker bus tour today.  One of the stops was the rock church.  Its made out of rock.  We went inside - there were loads of chairs.  And there were more chairs upstairs.  We went back outside and Lily, Grace and I climbed on top of the church for a photo.

Jack