Helsinki - Brrrrrrrr!

We get up at 8 AM Finland time. Boy are we tired. Somewhere in the night we docked at an island, Mariehamn. Breakfast is as large and varied as the dinner buffet. When you buy a ticket on the ferry, you have the option of buying the trip with or without a car, with or without meals. We buy the meals, and not the car passage. There are other restaurants on the ship so one can just go it alone. But we wanted to try the buffet.

Still no water that I can find. Wait, next to the juice I see a tap... Yeah! Real water. The mineral water last night tasted like the pipes had rusted... thus the mineral taste.

Great fruit selections and hot dish items. The egg and leek dish was pretty good. They always have a lavish smörgås variety too: breads, cheeses, meats, pate, cucumbers, peppers, etc. for your bread. We fore go the tea and coffee wanting to get to shore.

We have to take all our belongings with us since we are staying the night in Helsinki at the Skandic Grand Marina. I think people are allowed to leave their luggage, keep their room etc. while exploring Helsinki. Then they explore Helsinki for the day and board at 5PM for the return trip. We will spend the night in Helsinki and return tomorrow on a different ship. We are adding an extra day to the journey.

We go through virtually no customs. No passport presenting or bag searching. Come to think of it we haven't show our passports since the airport on our arrival. We take a Prius! taxi to the Grand Marina. Our room isn't ready so we store our bags in a locked room with Karli's computer stored in a locker for safety. Arvid researches our transportation options for the day. Karli and I get on the computer to check things back home. We had called before we left thinking we would not call while in Helsinki.

There are usually public computers at Scandics in the lobby. There are 3 for your use here. But, they are right by the bathrooms. Good if you are in need of them but bad if you have to stand or surf the net by them. They are stiinnkkkyy! From out here in the hall you can smell the awful odor! Why? This is a nice hotel, very nice!

At least you don't have to pay 6 crowns like in many Swedish places. This is about 75 cents. The Swedes say it is to add to the upkeep of them and ward off graffiti, etc. But my experience is that the 6 crown bathrooms tend to smell more and are in worse condition. In a Swedish mall for instance. There usually are no bathrooms in the stores. You are forced to use the pay-as-you-go ones. Stinky, again. Another hint. Always have 5 or 6 crowns in your pocket. Even restaurants charge to go!

The first thing we notice about Helsinki is that it is extremely cold and windy. Oh, my, gosh! We have a difficult time deciding what to do. There are guides in the paper and at the front desk, but we just don't know where to start. We decide to take the tram around the city. It will show us the sights of what we want to come back for. Tomorrow we are taking the bus tour of the city. We paid and arranged for this on the ship. We could not take it today because it leaves as the ship docks and we had to take our bags to the hotel first.

The city tram we take EVERYWHERE! Karli got to be an expert on reading the tram maps and deciding which one to ride and when they arrive and depart. Not an easy task when you are operating in the Finish language.

We go to the tourist bureau that the tram guy tells us to go to. It is under construction, boarded up and closed. We go to a souvenir shop, mainly to get warm, while Arvid searches for the tourist bureau. We discover how expensive it is to be on Euros. Our American dollar is pretty good in Sweden. We have actually seen a rise in the dollar since Karli has been here. But the Euro! $1.34 dollars equals one Euro. If your meal is 15 Euros, it is about $20. A small trinket in this shop was about 10 Euros which was about $13.00! For a tiny plastic key chain!

Roberts Coffee Shop

Arvid comes back with 3 all-day tram tickets. This will probably take us through tomorrow as well since it is a 24 hour usage.We find a big street where there are big neon signs on the side of buildings indicating there are stores inside. We go inside, or try to but many doors to the shopping centers are locked? What is going on? We find a coffee shop and the door near it is open. The stores in the whole shopping center are closed except the coffee shop and McDonald's. We go into Roberts Coffee to have some tea and coffee and ask what's up? It is a national holiday! A holiday for people to take down all their Christmas decorations... Absolutely no one told us this throughout the whole process of getting the tickets, paying for the tickets, talking to a travel agent or the ferry line people, or the hotel front desk. But we are visiting Helsinki on a day when all shops are closed.... Grrrrrrrrr.... And it is so cold I have lost the feeling in my feet, hands and nose.

One of the many shopping areas that are closed.

Bad photo. But off to the left is a skating rink in the middle of the city. There are many but I only snapped this one photo while we are on the bus.

We walk around some more hoping to find that wonderful shop that wants to defy the norm and stay open today. We find a movie theater. Australia is playing. We decide to go to the movies tonight, not now. We continue on our tram around the city. We do see interesting things. There are many skating rinks amidst the neighborhoods and in city blocks. They are out in the open and many have viewing grandstands too. Since it is a holiday, there are many families enjoying the ice.

We take the tram back to the Grand Marina to get into the room. The tram has no stop in front. We have to walk about 5 blocks to the hotel. Now that doesn't sound so bad, but in this bitter cold it really takes a lot out of me. It is brutal cold and wind. We take our bags out of the storage room and get to our room. It is nice. It is good sized and Karli has a big bed all to herself. The wide screen T.V. and the bathroom are equally large.

Karli has mapped out the way to the theater. There are many in Helsinki and we find one that is playing THE WOMEN. We take the tram to a center area. We find a nice pub type restaurant to eat in called Memphis. Karli and I had stir fry dinners that pushed our limits of hot/spicy tolerance. We asked the waitress where the theater was that we were looking for. She pointed to a building in the distance. Didn't look too far at all. We get there and ooooops.... wrong theater and nothing playing there looked interesting at all. We get directions to the correct theater from a person selling the tickets. She also directs us to the subway to get there. Wow, not the tram, the subway!

We get down to the subway and get on. It is amazing. So fast indeed. We get to the theater in no time at all. Of course we are doing all this in the dark. We really have no idea where we are in relationship to our hotel. The subway only runs from one side of the city to the other.

Once again, they have the same tradition in Finland of assigning seats when you purchase tickets. So, we are greeted to crowded lobbies with teens everywhere waiting for their movie to start. They capitalize on this by having tremendous aisles of candy to buy as well as ice cream and other snack items.

The selection surpasses that of any typical grocery store for sure. We have loads of fun shopping the candy aisles and looking at the many varieties. Picture the biggest candy store in the US mall where they sell bins of candy and multiply that by 10 I am sure.

We get into the movie and we are all on the end seat one above the other. But there is no aisle, we are against the wall. Not fun. But we enjoy the light hearted movie. No Swedish subtitles this time.

We are faced with taking different trams back to the hotel. Since they run less frequently at night, we know we will have to wait while switching trams. We all take the cold temperatures and the wind in consideration and decide to take a taxi back to the hotel. Mercedes taxi.