Today the shipped dropped anchor in Helsinki, Finland. 
I hadn’t heard much about Helsinki and was interested to see what the city had to offer. When you don’t really have much of a plan its really easy to learn, by getting on one of the tourists buses. They allow you to get on and off at various points and keep you entertained with info about the city and the stops on the tour. The first stop on the tour happened to be t
he highlight of the day. The Rock Church was like nothing I had ever seen before. It was a huge functioning church carved out of the rock right in the middle of the city. It doesn’t really look like much on the exterior but is very beautiful on the interior. We took the bus around the city and just listened to the commentary and learned about the various sights. We stopped at the market square for some shopping and walked around the harbor area. I wanted to try one of the local favorites, reindeer, but couldn’t bring myself to do it. Also, if you take a trip out of town a couple of hours, you can visit the place that Santa Clause is from. I always thought it was the north pole, but apparently its north Finland. After spending a day in Sweden, its hard for the locals to live up to those standards, but they were all very nice and helpful.
It wasn’t a very long stop today so we just enjoyed the afternoon in town, sitting at a café and listening to local music.
We brought up the fact that we don’t like how countries and cities are translated into English. So we pledged to try and only use the local names, so from now on Finland will be referred to as Suomi. It is going to be a very hectic weekend with two very long days in Russia so it wasn’t all bad to have a short and casual day. 
It doesn’t get dark in the Baltic Sea area until about 10:30pm or so and in the winter there is no sun for about 2 months. A third Suomi is also in the artic circle and in the winter it must be a totally different place to visit.
I hadn’t heard much about Helsinki and was interested to see what the city had to offer. When you don’t really have much of a plan its really easy to learn, by getting on one of the tourists buses. They allow you to get on and off at various points and keep you entertained with info about the city and the stops on the tour. The first stop on the tour happened to be t
he highlight of the day. The Rock Church was like nothing I had ever seen before. It was a huge functioning church carved out of the rock right in the middle of the city. It doesn’t really look like much on the exterior but is very beautiful on the interior. We took the bus around the city and just listened to the commentary and learned about the various sights. We stopped at the market square for some shopping and walked around the harbor area. I wanted to try one of the local favorites, reindeer, but couldn’t bring myself to do it. Also, if you take a trip out of town a couple of hours, you can visit the place that Santa Clause is from. I always thought it was the north pole, but apparently its north Finland. After spending a day in Sweden, its hard for the locals to live up to those standards, but they were all very nice and helpful.It wasn’t a very long stop today so we just enjoyed the afternoon in town, sitting at a café and listening to local music.
We brought up the fact that we don’t like how countries and cities are translated into English. So we pledged to try and only use the local names, so from now on Finland will be referred to as Suomi. It is going to be a very hectic weekend with two very long days in Russia so it wasn’t all bad to have a short and casual day. 
It doesn’t get dark in the Baltic Sea area until about 10:30pm or so and in the winter there is no sun for about 2 months. A third Suomi is also in the artic circle and in the winter it must be a totally different place to visit.
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