Helsinki is Beautiful in Autumn

Helsinki Cathedral
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Helsinki is a beautiful city, it has space. The buildings aren't as tall as London, and there are lots of parks, trees, statues, sculptures etc. It feels cultured and pretty. I love the trams - they add an olde worlde feel especially the noise they make - they conjour up images of old iron curtain films like Gorky Park.

The people all seem to speak English and they are so helpful - it's as if they have all had that lecture you used to get at school before a school trip - the one about being an ambasador for the school - except they've taken it really seriously!

Helsinki initial impressions

John and Rhi at the lake
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As lovely and efficient and as English speaking as this city is, it's comforting to know that wherever I go, it's like one of the National Lampoons Griswald family holidays - how do I do it?

In a stroke of geeeeenius last night I managed to plug in the charger for the lap top upside down, resulting in about 4 hours worth of "blue screen of death" from microsoft, and a complete girly hissy fit from me. It finally resolved itself just seconds before I was going to give it the honour of taking the first unmanned laptop flight from a 5th floor window! Even more annoying for being completely my fault!

Helsinki National Museum
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Today though, we walked for hours around the city, saw a citroen 2cv 60th anniversary convention on our hunt for Tourist information centre. (the hunt which also saw us stumbling into a modern ballet class accidentally to ask "which way for the beer tram?" Apparantly they weren't the tourist info centre, but I can now do a mean pas de deux!). The 2cv thing was great for people watching.  I have never seen so many beards, pipes, berets and real ale drinkers in one place before. It was such a fabulous exercise in stereotypes - I wonder if they realised? What is certain is the numerous teenage kids crammed into the back of the 2cvs knew.  They had that look that only teenagers can do - the one that combines boredom and total embarrassement and somehow begs you to call social services to get them away from the parents.

Lots of sculptures around Helsinki
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After that we mooched around the harbour and market for a while - lunch on the market stalls is really tasty and very good value. Two beers in a bar (by which I mean half a lager each) cost more than lunch and beers on the market! So market it is from now on - I am from Yorkshire after all!

Then we tried to find the Natural History Museum, which after several rounds of "Is that the same statue of Mannerheim as we saw 10 minutes ago" we found - 15 minutes before it was due to close!

Parliament Building
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Plan is to go to a jazz club tonight, and assorted museums and sea life centre tomorrow.

Love to all - incidentally - Johns mobile isn't picking up messages so text him if you can't get through.