Bob and Ann in Scandinavia 2007

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Other than some clunking near our deck, we had a very good night's sleep. With earplugs and the motion of the ship, it felt like we were being rocked to sleep. I was up at 6:00 because I wanted to go onto the deck to see where we were. Although I had my GPS turned on, I wanted to actually see land. During the night, we had sailed away from the little islands that we saw the night before. We were now in open water and going 21 MPH. The wind at the bow was fierce. The sky was clear, though, and I could see land in the distance.

Back inside, we went to the breakfast buffet at 8:00. Actually, we looked at the line at 7:45 and decided to wait until 8:15 when the mob had settled down. While we were waiting in our cabin, an automatic window washer made a few passes and scared Ann. The breakfast buffet was very good with lots of meat, cheese, bread, fish, cereal and strong coffee. We sat at a table with four other people and could look out at the water.

Market Square

The ship docked in Helsinki at 10:00. (09:00 Stockholm time). We waited until most of the crowd cleared out before we disembarked. We couldn't get into our hotel until 13:30, so we tried to stow our luggage in a locker at the terminal. The lockers were full, so we walked 100 meters to a big Hilton hotel, bought two Helsinki cards and got permission to put our bags into the hotel's baggage room. The big Scandinavian cities all have these special 24-hour cards which you can use for public transportation, museums and many of the other sights. They can be a real bargain.

We made a short walk from the hotel to the market area which was at the end of the harbor. There were lots of kiosks selling souvenirs, fresh produce, fish and food to eat. After browsing for a few minutes, we walked up the street to find out where to catch the 12:00 city tour bus. We use our Helsinki card to get tickets. Then we went back to the market a got some warm meat pies to eat before the tour started.

Sibelius Monument

The tour pointed out all of the high points of Helsinki including the Rock Church, the Sibelius Monument, museums, government buildings and parks. After the tour, we walked to the Omena Hotellit Oy, our very budget hotel for the night. The hotel is unique because it has no front desk and no personnel around. They sent us a numeric code that we used to open the door. After dropping off our day packs, we took a couple of trolleys back to the Hilton, grabbed our bags and took a cab back to the Omena. (Our bags were too heavy to take public transportation.

Ann in front of The National Museum

We cleaned up and walked over to the National Museum to see exhibits of archeological finds of relics from thousands of years ago. There also were exhibits of life in Finland up to the present.

Our dinner was at Lappi, a restaurant that specializes in food from Lapland. Ann had a couple of appetizers - mildly smoked reindeer with mushroom pate and traditional salmon soup. I had roasted elk with pureed potatoes and celery followed by blueberry mousse in raspberry soup. Very tasty.