Helsinki - Take Two
Sunday 08/12/2007 5:09 PM (In the United Kingdom: 10:09 PM)
On my last day in Helsinki, I went to the city center with Timo when he went in for work. He and Nina gave me a lot of great suggestions for things to do until I met Timo again in the afternoon to go to the airport. So here it is: the last day (for now) in Finland.
In the morning, I took a ferry to the Suomenlinna Sea Fortress. It's only a twenty-minute ride, but the island seems like a different world. Definitely a place to spend a day or two on the next trip. Here's a photo of the ferry (for Alex):
There's also a naval academy at Suomenlinna, and while I was grabbing a cup of coffee to go from the cafe next to the ferry dock, a big navy ship appeared. As it turns out, they were docking, so I stayed to watch the action.
OK, so this photo doesn't look very action-filled, but it isn't every day you see a ship this big just pull up and unload right in front of you.
Suomenlinna is actually a garrison town built on six islands -- only about 850 people live there now, so in between ferry deliveries of tourists, it can feel a little like a ghost town. I only saw two cars while I was there. The fortress is filled with spaces to explore ... I didn't take the official tour (after being distracted by the navy ship docking, I missed the English-speaking morning tour), so I don't know what all of them were originally used for, but I like to think it was more fun to explore on my own. I took a lot of photos, but most of them need some photoshop work to adjust the lighting. Here's one to give you an idea, though:
From what I saw, the islands are a series of winding paths with bridges and tunnels with passageways and arched windows. I was surprised by how much freedom the general public has to roam around. I walked down this passageway until it was too dark to see and, frankly, I got a little creeped out. On the left side, after each of these archways, is a window (on the right side is open space, I think used for storage at some point), but after five or six archways, there weren't any more windows, and then there was a stone staircase going down into complete darkness. Now that I'm describing it, I think I oughta add more photos, even if there are lighting issues:
Here's the view from one of the bridges (nice birds, aren't they? I didn't even realize they were in the shot until after I downloaded these photos to my computer):
There are also a few courtyards ... this is Suuri Linnanpiha, or The Great Courtyard, and it holds the tomb of Augustin Ehrensvard, the guy who designed the fortress:
I only spent a couple of hours on the island because I wanted to take a last look at some of the shops in the city center -- last chance to buy Finland souvenirs, and all. I ran into another Finnish busker at the market:
And sunflowers ... of course, I had to take this photo.
This reminds me of a photo I took on my earlier visit to Helsinki, but never posted: a single sunflower growing out of what seems like a bunch of rocks on the coast. I saw it with Sari on the day we saw the swans. I've never associated Finland with sunflowers, though there's no reason to think they wouldn't grow here, and I've never seen a sunflower just growing in the wild, especially not on a rocky coastline:
And the last photo of Helsinki, from the coffee shop where I met Timo at the end of the day:
I don't suppose it's a very appropriate photo to sign off from the Finland adventure, but it'll do. I regret not having photos of Timo and Nina and their girls from the night I spent at their house, but for once, I actually didn't think about having a camera on hand to document the moment -- and maybe that's a sign that I was feeling a little more at home, a little less like a tourist, in Finland.
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