The activities of the past two weeks finally caught up on us. We arrived in Helsinki early Saturday morning and by the time that we got to the hotel, we were exhausted. After a quick nap, we bounced back and set out sightseeing.
We spent the rest of Saturday walking around the city centre checking out the architectural highlights. Helsinki is beautiful, but it lacks the old world charm of Tallinn, and even Stockholm. Most of the buildings are from the late 1800s and early 1900s, with much of the development taking place since the 1920s (post independence from Russia).
Today we explored the Design District, which was definitely the highlight of the city. We went to the Design Museum to see the early works of Oiva Toikko and Alvo Altar, two of the most influential Scandinavian designers of our time. We then went up to the Olympic facilities from the 1952 olympic summer games. Very impressive given that the stadium and pool were complete in 1940, the year that Helsinki was supposed to host the games.
Touring around has been tough here. All the street names have at least 20 characters in them and they are written in both Finnish and Swedish, which isn't much help when our maps have only one or the other. We have completely given up on pronoucing anything. On the upside, Finland is the only country we are visiting that uses the Euro. This has made the currency conversion much easier. In Estonia we have to divide everything by 13, which is not always an easy task.
Tomorrow morning we travel to St. Petersburg, Russia. When we bought our train tickets, we were given yet another document to fill out for the border crossing. The ticket salesperson warned us that once we enter Russia, the train restaurant and bathrooms are closed. We understand the restaurant, but the bathrooms? It is still a 4.5 hour train ride once we cross the border!
We should have Internet tomorrow night, once we get to our hotel. We'll let you know how the border crossing goes, but if you don't hear anything until Tuesday, don't worry. We feel confident that we have ALL of our paperwork in order.
We spent the rest of Saturday walking around the city centre checking out the architectural highlights. Helsinki is beautiful, but it lacks the old world charm of Tallinn, and even Stockholm. Most of the buildings are from the late 1800s and early 1900s, with much of the development taking place since the 1920s (post independence from Russia).
Today we explored the Design District, which was definitely the highlight of the city. We went to the Design Museum to see the early works of Oiva Toikko and Alvo Altar, two of the most influential Scandinavian designers of our time. We then went up to the Olympic facilities from the 1952 olympic summer games. Very impressive given that the stadium and pool were complete in 1940, the year that Helsinki was supposed to host the games.
Touring around has been tough here. All the street names have at least 20 characters in them and they are written in both Finnish and Swedish, which isn't much help when our maps have only one or the other. We have completely given up on pronoucing anything. On the upside, Finland is the only country we are visiting that uses the Euro. This has made the currency conversion much easier. In Estonia we have to divide everything by 13, which is not always an easy task.
Tomorrow morning we travel to St. Petersburg, Russia. When we bought our train tickets, we were given yet another document to fill out for the border crossing. The ticket salesperson warned us that once we enter Russia, the train restaurant and bathrooms are closed. We understand the restaurant, but the bathrooms? It is still a 4.5 hour train ride once we cross the border!
We should have Internet tomorrow night, once we get to our hotel. We'll let you know how the border crossing goes, but if you don't hear anything until Tuesday, don't worry. We feel confident that we have ALL of our paperwork in order.
No comments:
Post a Comment