Helsinki.....continued

Monday

Back to the kiosk for another day ticket!  Our destination was the end of bus route 24.  Again we traveled through residential and commercial areas, plus parks and beaches.

  Another island, Seurassari was our goal, where an open air museum features buildings from all areas of Finland that have been moved intact to show building traditions from the 18th to 20th century.  A trail system around the whole island offers a peaceful walk, and for the adventurous, a nude beach is available for the sum of 3€...men and women have separate sections....and no, we didn't venture in to investigate.  We cached our way around and enjoyed the various options to see the city from another perspective.  The flame cauldron for the 1952 olympics was very visible at one point.  The spot we chose for lunch, offered tables and a BBQ for visitors to cook on.

Restaurant in the middle of the park

A fishing hole

Olympic tourch (1952)

Picnic area

Open air museum buildings

Church

Eerie!

Windmills in Finland too

Decoration for midsummer festival

We caught the #24 bus back into the central train station area.  Checked out where to catch our bus to the airport the next day and the size of luggage lockers if we need one.  The Uspenski Cathedral has the shiniest gold domes we have seen anywhere and although we couldn't enter, the walk up the steps to the front door, provided more photo ops of the city and market below.

On the front balcony of the Natural History Museum

New and the old

Back to the market, we had a repeat dinner at 3:30 as today the market closes earlier and there were fewer vendors in the square.  We visited a few shops in the area before boarding the tram back to the hotel for a rest.

Saturday...cache in a closed museum!

 

Tuesday...logged!

Then back out to enjoy the beautiful sunny evenings that last into the night, a few more caches and wandering the streets. Skyped with Sheryl for a while, she is in Croatia and had just come back from a day of touring around Venice.  Paul and Sheryl will be joining us in Sneek later this month.

Tuesday

I (Pam) love the sunshine and the light so late in the day but still having light for most of the night especially when it is kind of humid  is making it hard to stay asleep at night. I woke up at 1 and it's twilight and 2 and it's dawn!!!! So needless to say I didn't get much sleep last night.

Today we are leaving Helsinki to go back to the home exchange in Sneek. The flight didn't leave until 4:15 pm so we took our time over breakfast and getting things into suitcases... Carol's neatly packed and Pam's crossing her fingers that everything will get in and the zippers zipped up! We left the hotel and went straight for the train station to put our luggage in lockers and then went out for a last walk (and geocache.) Then back to the station for a bite of lunch, picked up our luggage and caught the shuttle to the airport....really early like always. When we came through here on our way to Vilnus the place was a zoo....today it is less busy.

Renovating!

Can you see the dragonfly?

Bitcoin machine.....

I have really enjoyed  our whole tour of the Baltics and the little add-on in Helsinki. All the countries have been fresh and  green (colour wise) and clean. Lots of forests and farms, no mountains.  The Baltics are not as popular as Paris and Amsterdam,  making everywhere less crowded and less hectic.  A lot of the people that we met and dealt with speak some English.....Helsinki more so...the people have been friendly and the sights interesting....I have learned a lot about the turbulent history of these countries, especially their last 100 years.   The weather (for me) was just right not too cold and not too hot, a couple of days of rain....but what the heck we are from Vancouver.....the rain capital of the world!

Goodbye to Helsinki

Off to Amsterdam and Sneek!