On the Road and at Home: Baltic Memories - 2017 0 Helsinki, Finland

Helsinki, Finland

Our next port of call was Helsinki, but after our exhausting 2 days in St Petersburg I am afraid we were not feeling quite as energetic as we should have been to really enjoy the city, but we had to keep going and so we used the Hop On Hop Off bus in the hope that we could see the sights of Helsinki without using too much energy. Our first stop was the Rock Church but when we walked the short distance to it, we found that there were huge lines of people waiting to get in so we decided to just walk around and we found a path up the rock behind the church but it wasn't worth the effort, so we just took a couple of photos and

went back to wait for the bus and thought we might get back to the church later in the day, but that was not to be.

The Rock Church

We have been inside an underground church in Coober Pedy, the opal town in outback Australia, so we didn't feel too disappointed at not being able to go inside, although it would have been very different interior.

Crowds at the Rock Church

A nice sculpture near the bus stop

After waiting more than 15 minutes for the next Ho Ho bus, we arrived at the Sibelius sculpture. dedicated to the famous composer Jean Sibelius.

Sibelius lived from 1865 until 1957, and planning for the monument started shortly after his death. The finished sculpture was unveiled in 1961, giving Finland its first abstract public monument.

Sibelius Monument

View through the sculpture

The sculpture is in a lovely park and as it was a sunny day and not too hot, we were happy to walk around and enjoy our short stay there. The sculpture is very large and we were able to go in under it and look up through the tubes to the sky.

Our next stop was in the city centre, and we walked around trying to find a pharmacy and eventually ended up in an underground station, and after going through and asking we finally found the pharmacy but then we had to find our way out and of course it wasn't where we entered. This is one of the joys of travelling in cities unknown, so we stopped for a coffee to get our enthusiasm back.

On our walk through the city we came across some interesting shops and enjoyed the different style of this lovely city, but as our time was limited, we couldn't linger too long.

Girls day out

Bicycles everywhere

Somewhere in Helsinki!!

After leaving this shopping area, we again waited for the Ho Ho bus which took us to a large market area. We didn't get off the bus here as we wanted to see more of the sights, but we had to wait there for some unknown reason for about 20 minutes, so if we had known we would have had a walk around. We finally set off again but there weren't any other stops, so we just enjoyed what there was to see and ended up back at our starting point near our ship, and decided that it was enough for us. I think Helsinki would have been better if we weren't so tired and after talking to other people on the ship, it seemed that the Ho Ho bus there was not well organised, or perhaps it was just a bad day.