Helsinki, Wednesday 20 August

We got an extra hour’s sleep last night and not so early a tour, leaving at 9.45. First was a cruise around the archipeligo of Helsinki: lots of beautiful waterfront properties, very secluded and everyone with their own private sauna house down near the water. Fins are fanatical about their sauna and will swim/sauna/swim/sauna for a couple of hours at the end of the day (summer, of course). Coming back into port we passed the ice breakers which are crucial to water transport here when the river freezes.

We had a few minutes at the markets on the waterfront, then a bus tour of the highlights. First stop was the town square in front of the magnificent cathedral, built by the Russians as an Orthodox church and then transformed into a Lutheran church when Finland became independent. They removed “all the trimmings” of Orthodoxy and it’s now less ornately decorated but a magnificent building, dominating the skyline. We stopped briefly at the square for a photo shoot.

We only saw the centre of the city and surrounds. One interesting stop was the sculpture to honour the composer Sibelius. It was so modern that the locals were unhappy, so the artist had to add a sculpture depicting the composer as well. (That’s him on the right.)

I decided to stay downtown where I could get free wifi. One of Finland’s major industries is information technology, the home of Nokia, until recently purchased by Microsoft. I found the only Starbucks in town (a very recent addition and very popular). A sad email from home: Margaret, whom I visited just before I left and to whom I said goodbye, passed away on Monday; it’s difficult to be alone getting this sort of news and I would have loved to have someone to talk to about how I felt. I will miss our visits very much and I’m desperately sad for Bob; he will be lost without his beautiful wife.

I spent an hour trying to catch up on emails and this blog. I was pleased to get quite a way through both and hopefully tomorrow I’ll get completely up to date in Stockholm after my excursion to the Abba Museum for fun.

As we sailed just before 5.00pm it was fun to wave at the Aida, which had followed us all night from St Petersburg. Dinner again was nice, catching up with what everyone had been doing.

I went to a tech session about movie making slide shows with music – good pickup on some skills. Afterwards I sat with Karen from Brisbane, whom I’d met a few times and is travelling alone. She missed out on pictures of the  Church on the Spilt Blood because her camera battery died, so I downloaded my pictures for her. We had tea in the Lido and talked techy talk. Now at 9.30 it’s rockin’ and rollin’ and there’s a bit of a storm a little way away, lots of rain and fog out on the ocean.

Yay! The clocks go back another hour tonight.