September 11th, 2008: Helsinki, Finland
Bob: We planned out our day in Helsinki pretty much to match Rick Steve's recommended walking tour of the city. I marked the route on our Costa map of Helsinki, but we ultimately took Rick Steve's "Scandinavia" along with us so that we had both his map as a backup and his written descriptions of what we would see on the walk. Having decided all that, we filled in the rest of the morning before we arrived in Helsinki with making masquerade ball masks at a morning arts and crafts class. The young lady leading the session had plain white plastic masks laid out on each table as well as plates with different colors of paint on them. While we were each busy painting away, she also came by and offered us tubes of different colors of powdered glitter that we could sprinkle over the wet paint to enhance the effect. What with paint spattering and glitter scattering everywhere, it was a good thing that the table was covered with a plastic tablecloth!
|
Monika: After breakfast we read and wrote for a while before joining the arts and crafts staff for mask painting. We each got a white mask and a pallette with the basic colors and were told to just paint. Our masks turned out very differently. While Bob created beautifully distinct parts (eye, nose, cheeks, mouth) I painted more in large areas and ended up with a mask completely but very simply painted. Well here are the results: |
Bob: In any case, we returned to the cabin where I hung out masks up to dry and then we had lunch while the ship approached Helsinki. After lunch we repaired to Deck 10, which is the easiest deck to walk clear around the ship, to watch our approach into the port. Unfortunately, we did not take the right-hand fork of the ship channel that led directly to the docks downtown, but rather took the left-hand fork that led to a large, clean, efficent, and quite sterile dock area southwest of town. |
Monika: After having deposited our masks in our room, we went up on Deck 10 to watch our arrival in Helsinki. We were somewhat dismayed that we were docked somewhat farther from town than we had hoped (the first sign pointing us to the center indicated that it was 3 km) but we are Volksmarchers and despite what my sister may think, sometimes we walk without expecting a stamp. We ate a quick (but nourishing) lunch and were off the ship by 12:30. |
Bob: That unexpected docking position added a few kilometers to our planned walking tour of Helsinki, and we improvised by changing our walking route such that we basically zigzagged our way North through some relatively modern neighborhoods to the Church In The Rock that Heinke and Gustl had told us about, after which we planned to cut more or less East to the Esplanade and the old central district of Helsinki. On our way up to the church we saw quite a few pretty buildings, street cars, and even an open air flea market near the small boat marina.
|
Monika: Checking map, GPS, and our trusted Rick Steve's guidebook we decided to first head for the Church in the Rock. This is really an engineering tour de force. From the outside you see the native rock with a bunch of stones on top of which, if you look carefully, you can see a copper roof. From the inside you are in a beautiful round church. Beneath the copper roof where windows to lighten the place. Music was playing and I only wished the tourist would obey the "Silence please" sign.... oh well. But we sat down and admired and took pictures. |
Bob: Althoug my GPS was a bit unstable in the walled canyon formed by the streets, it still gave us valuable guidance in walking from the Chruch on the rock over to the Parliament Building and then down to the Esplanade, a park stretching East-West for about 3 blocks in the old section of Helsinki near the harbor. The park had nice trees, statues with sea gulls on them, cute little kiosks selling ice cream, food, and drinks, and even a pay bathroom (.50 Euro!). Down at the harbor end of the Esplanade we found Tourist Information. They had bus schedules for the 14B and 16 Busses that would carry us right back to the ship if we got too tired of walking, and they also had free Internet access. The good news was the 3 internet terminals in the corner of Tourist Information really were free internet portals so we could sign in and check our email; the bad news was that the touch-pad keyboards were so bad that it was almost impossible to type any emails! I did the best I could, but finally just gave up in disgust. |
Monika: From the church, we wound our way back past a museum with a moose in front and through a park along the Esplanade down to the waterfront. We stopped at the Tourist Information where they had free Internet on awful machines. I managed to get us signed into email and we checked but could not answer many. |
Bob: Our next stop was the Lutheran cathedral on the hill on the North side of Senate Square. The church was neoclassical in design, which is to say vaguely resembing a Greek temple inside with columns and domes, but no other ornamentation whatsoever. I found it a bit Spartan for my tastes, but we enjoyed listening to a young girl play violin while we rested our feet a bit. Apparently she was going to play for the service next Sunday and had just come down to practice and try out the acoustics, so to speak. |
Monika: Our next stop was the Senate square with the big Lutheran cathedral. It was beautiful in its stark unadorned style. A ten year old practiced a violin piece she was going to perform and it really made you appreciate the acoustics of the place. |
Bob: From the cathedral we walked downhill to the harbor where a really big flea market was just in the process of closing up shop for the day, despite the fact it was only a little after 3:00 p.m. Besides the really touristy knicknacks, there were some only moderately touristy knicknacks and among those we found a cheese slicer with a reindeer outlined on the cutter edge and some wooden salad forks. Monika had a relatively cheap beer at 2.50 Euro (compared to prices on the ship, that is), and we decided we still had enough energy and time to walk back to the ship. |
Monika: From the cathedral we walked through some of the small old cobblestoned streets where we found an old fashion water pump. Unfortunately no water was to be found, although we tried. |
Bob: Following the sidewalks around the harbor to retun to the ship turned out to be a pretty route with really nice houses facing sea as well as some small parks. We also saw a striking, 3-sided monument shaped a bit like a church steeple, but I couldn't quite figure out who it commemorated. Possibly some folks lost at sea, but I really couldn't decipher the Finnish inscription well enough to translate it.
|
Monika: By now it was time for us to head back to the ship. We both felt fresh enough to walk rather than find a bus, but we did opt for the shortest route along the waterfront. We were passed by a pelaton of bicycles and found out later, that it was one of the ship's shore excursions: a 3 hour bike ride through Helsenki. Oh well, with our 4 hour walking tour, we also saw pretty much everything and were in considerably less danger of getting run over! The waterfront had one big park with a memorial to a ferry accident in the middle. Very nice.
|
| Index |
| Map of Baltic Cruise |
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||