Day 13: Helsinki - It's June, so it's hot

We awoke to a beautiful sunny and warm day, and a 45 minute walk into town. By the time we got there, it was a beautiful HOT day. On the way we stopped at a beach to play in the ocean, but it wasn't enough to keep us cool for long (despite the near freezing temperatures).

We walked past a marina, three different parks filled with children, and the docks for the ferries to Stockholm. When we rounded a bend, we clearly saw the two cathedrals of Helsinki, each on their own little hill, rising above the city.

We entered Market Square, where there were a bunch of market stalls selling anything from fruit, to meals, to reindeer pelts, to jewelry, to souvenirs. We walked though it all to get to Uspenski Cathedral. It was closed, but from its hill we got a nice view of the city. The cathedral was made of red brick and accented with some sort of green metal I suppose could have been copper. The top was decorated with golden ornaments, and the contrasting colors looked very pretty together.

Next we walked to the Lutheran Cathedral, which had a lot more steps to climb.

 It was worth it though, because not only was it open to visitors, but someone was playing the awesome organ the entire time we were there.

When we left we found WiFi, but it was weird and gave us some problems. It let me post Tallinn, but only half of the first day of St. Petersburg. It also wouldn't let us get mail. So we moved on. (Eventually, Myra notes.)

We started our walking tour in Market Square and walked up the main street. Most of the things on the tour aren't worth mentioning here, but at the end we visited Temppeliaukio, which is a church built into the rock and that was pretty interesting.

The Outside:

The Inside:

Also interesting is that they charge a euro to use the restroom. Seems pretty smart of them, since there is no entry fee to get into the church.

After that we started back. I really need water, but I was waiting to get some at a grocery store so I wouldn't have to pay an arm and leg for it. But there were no grocery stores! At least, there weren't any until I dragged Rich and Myra into a mall to check the basement, something I learned from China. And low and behold, there was a grocery store in the basement! Not only that, but they had WiFi! So we got ourselves a table in the food court and sat there for about an hour, resting, drinking, and checking email. Also, they didn't charge for use of the bathroom :). The cheapest container of water was this giant 5 liter container, so we tried to drink as much as possible, but I still had to drag around at least 4 liters of it for the rest of the day.

We finally made it back to Market Square, where we hopped on a boat bound for Suomenlinna fortress.

It was getting late (we needed to be back at the boat by 5), so we only had a half hour to explore the island. It was pretty cool, with walls and buildings dating back from the 18th century.

 It was a fortress:

But we were tired and couldn't wander far, so we didn't see as much as we would have liked.

Bye bye, 'semolina' (as Mia called it): 

We made it back to the ship with a whole ten minutes to spare, then collapsed in our room for a half hour before rushing off to Evening Trivia, where we didn't do nearly as bad as we thought. But we still didn't win :(I might have forgotten to mention it when it happened, but we did win at trivia once). We had a nice dinner, went hot tubbing, then went to a magic show. After that, Myra and I went to check out the Chocoholic's Buffet, which was interesting to see, though not as good to taste, but still fun.
Then we all slept happily ever after.

~Mia