Helsinki - A thriving city
Trip Start
Aug 20, 2008
1
3
15
Trip End
Sep 15, 2008
Helsinki,
Southern Finland,
Finland
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
HELSINKI
Two days later we boarded the Royal Princess. It was a nicely appointed ship with a slightly
old-world look, lots of wood panelling, mirrors, and elegant ceramics. Princess touts it
as one of their "small" ships. It is hardly small, but with approximately 700 passengers it is smaller than the Princess megaships with several thousand passengers and we will be able to access harbors and piers not possible with the megaships. Our room makes good use of mirrors to give it a spacious feel. (We can take a page out of their book with respect to the Westside apartment.) It has a bright and cheerful feel and with a desk and small couch feels like more than just a place to sleep. We also have a balcony which considering our itinerary touring the northlands may or may not get much use.
Our first port was Helsinki. The resemblance to Stockholm is immediate, but on a smaller scale. Pretty port area with lovely old buildings and churches centered around an open air market selling seasonal
fruit (mostly berries - raspberries, lingon berries, and several kinds of currents) as well as touristy items like t-shirts, fur hats, leather purses, etc. After a stop at the tourist office to learn where we could get Finnish food, i.e. reindeer meat, we took off walking in search of the recommended restaurant. The walk took us through the commercial area along a beautiful street with a park down the middle and shops reminiscent of the
Champs Elysees. As it was a lovely day people were sitting at the sidewalk cafes and in the park.
In search of the restaurant, we left the shopping district and walked through a less fancy area.
Small businesses and budget restaurants lined the narrow streets. People were going about their
business in a purposeful way. We finally found the restaurant only to learn that it was not open for lunch. After referring to the map again we took off in the direction of the Tempeliaukio Church which Marilyn said was a
must-see, hoping to find a place to eat (authentic Finnish food) on the way. We passed mid-eastern, Asian, American fast food but nothing that looked in the least Finnish. We gave up on reindeer meat but Joe said that we did not have to stoop to McDonalds! Finally, by chance we passed a building with large plate glass windows slightly below street level through which we could see people eating food that at least looked European. It was a nicely designed interior reflecting the Finnish modern look so we took a chance.
It turned out to be mainly a bar and in fact for food they had only three menu choices which were written on a blackboard in Finnish. Finnish is linguistically related to Hungarian and Korean, not to any Germanic or Latin languages. So there was no guessing around as to what was on the menu based on any of our high school or college language study. Every word was opaque. We were stumped! An attractive young woman in business attire working on a laptop was sitting near the board. Joe went and asked if she spoke English - which she did (perfectly!). She got up and very kindly went over the menu with us making sure we understood everything. A waitress appeared at this point, who, as it turned out, also spoke perfect English. We each ordered one of the three items. Marilyn got a bowl of potato leek soup, Joe got medallions of beef, and I got baked salmon. (Bill had opted out of lunch). Each dish was more delicious than the next and we all insisted that each of us taste each other's dishes! Marilyn and I agreed that the salmon was the best we'd ever eaten. Were we glad the reindeer meat hadn't worked out!!!
The Tempeliaukio Church, which was only a few blocks from the restaurant, is built into rock which is hard to describe as just saying "built into rock" conjures up a feeling of a gloomy bunker which it was
not. In fact it was a circular bowl blasted into a stunning gneissic rock formation of coal black mafic
minerals, pink feldspars, white quartz veins and the like metamorphosed into abstract shapes. The ceiling was a
circular roof that admits light at the periphery where it meets the stone bowl it sets on. Marilyn was right it
is a "must-see" and any verbal description does not do it justice.
A young girl was giving a piano concert in the sanctuary. We sat and enjoyed her playing for awhile although the constant parade of tourist busloads of people filing in and out was somewhat distracting. The pianist seemed unperturbed by the sightseers, however, and played away. At one point she a finished a piece, casually sat back, and stretched before continuing on.
We walked a different route on the way back to the ship, cutting through an indoor mall which was playing host to the same sort of teens that crawl the malls back home, moving from store to store in small groups. There were few international name brands represented in the shops, but many of the stores' names took their inspiration from abroad for their names e.g. "Funky Lady", "Backstreet", "Team Place", and even "Bald Fellows!"
We did not have much time in Finland, but our impression was of an upbeat country, not as wealthy as Sweden perhaps, but one clear of the old Soviet Russia influence and participating in the general development and prosperity of Western Europe.
