Touring Helsinki
Saturday 07/28/2007 11:18 AM (In Finland: 6:18 PM)
We spent the day sightseeing in Helsinki and then came back to Vantaa where Sari cooked a wonderful meal of baked salmon and potatoes. Once I post pictures from today, Mika is taking me to some places outside of Helsinki for more pictures. Before I get started with Helsinki photos, though, there is this picture for Alex. I took it from the plane when we were over Germany ... see the other plane in the middle of the photo? It was kind of strange to see a plane out the window of the plane, but I imagine this is a more common occurence that I think.
So here are Mika, Brenda and Sari at the restaurant we visited in between the airport and their place in Vantaa:
And here are Sari and Brenda outside a beautiful church (Helsinki Cathedral--you can see the whole thing a couple of photos down) they took me to see on the first evening:
Then we came back for sauna and dinner and, as you already know, many hours of talking. Once we all woke up this morning and Sari called us in for breakfast, I was so impressed with the table that I had to take a picture:
It almost looks too pretty to eat, but it was also delicious! And here's a close up of the brown bread ... especially for Dad (the dark brown bread is all end pieces!):
Then we headed out for the day. At our first stop, we took a little walk along an inlet of the Baltic Sea and saw some swans:
Then we made our way over to Urho Kekkonen's summer house. He was president of Finland for 25 years. Here's his place:
And here are Sari & Mika in front of Kekkonen's sauna:
Then we visited the Sibelius monument (he is a great Finnish composer). Thanks to Mika for taking this photo ...
This is one of the most popular tourist attractions around (and where I took the photo of Brenda and Sari the night before), the Helsinki Cathedral:
And inside is a statue of Martin Luther:
We walked toward Market Square (that's Mika's shoulder, in red, to the right of this photo):
And ran into several cool statues along the way, like this one ...
and this one,
which is on top of this one:
Did you follow that? The guy with the bird on his head is on top of the statue you see directly above this line of text. And no, the birds on the heads are not part of the statues ... those are live birds, just hanging out to complicate tourist's photos.
We also some Finnish buskers (like how I'm starting to use my new European vocabulary?)
And now I feel I have to note that the last several photos are from all over Helsinki, and we were headed to Market Square. Most of these were taken after we were done at Market Square, but now I'm taking us back there again because I forgot to include the one I have from the actual market:
So now my camera battery is charged up again and we're off. Tomorrow, we drive to Timo's place to meet Antti and then I'll be headed out of Helsinki, to the west coast of mid-Finland.
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