Ron and Sally Jo Blog

We returned to Helsinki – after a stormy night on our ship.  We had left Helsinki 5 days before but in completely different weather.  Then the skies were sunny and temperatures were in the low 80s.  This time it was cloudy, rainy, windy with temperatures in the low 50s.

We visited the Uspenski Cathedral, an Eastern Orthodox cathedral built in the 1860s.  It had been closed when we were in Helsinki before.

We then visited the City Hall where they were having a special exhibit of five decades of film production in Finland.

We returned to the Esplanade Park & Boulevard just to watch people.  And completed our time in Helsinki at the Market Hall.

We spent 1 ½ days in Helsinki—but we will be back!  Took a city tour.  There was too much to see and it was hard to actually see when sitting in a  bus.  We did sort of get a feel for the city.

We stopped at the monument for Sibelius.  The sculpture consists of series of more than 600 hollow steel pipes welded together in a wave-like pattern. The purpose of the artist was to capture the essence of the music of Sibelius.  An image of Sibelius was added at the side.

We stopped at the Rock Church—carved from bedrock granite, opened in 1969.  Beautiful inside, wonderful acoustics.  We were privileged to hear a piano recital while there.

We also stopped at the Evangelical Lutheran Cathedral built in the mid-1800’s.  Again, we just happened to arrive for a short organ recital.  Beautiful music.  The inside is quite plain, but lovely.

We were near the open market and had our lunch there twice.  One can find crafts, flowers, fruits and vegetables, fresh fish, and meals.  The gulls also have found this place and are very cocky.  We saw one fly into one of the eating shelters and take fish from someone’s plate before they even knew it!

We spent an afternoon at the island sea fortress, Suomenlinna, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  Construction was started in 1748 by the Swedish government (Finland then under Sweden) to protect against Russian expansion.  The lilacs were in full bloom and very fragrant.

These maps were provided by our tour guide at the end of our trip as a summary. The blue squiggles indicate stormy weather!

We spent two days in northern Finland in Lapland.  We traveled by bus towards Ivalo.  We had lunch with a Sami family who run a “camp” and fixed us a good lunch.

We visited a reindeer farm run by Sami people.  They talked about caring for the reindeer (they are all owned) and a bit about Sami culture.  Only recently is the culture recognized again as being something worth keeping.  For example, the man learned only Finnish but children nowadays do learn the Sami language in school.

Gold mining used to be important in the late 1800s in this area.  We stopped at a park where a man is very enthusiastic about gold mining.  He has recreated a gold mining town with copies of buildings from Colorado and Alaska.  He himself has traveled all over the world to compete in contests in panning for gold.  He has won many awards.  The World Gold Mining Competition in 2019 is to be held here.  We had a chance to try panning and Ron found a tiny flake!

One evening we broke into smaller groups and had a supper in a Sami home.  We had a delightful family.  The wife is a health inspector, the husband leads snow mobile tours and does construction, and they have a very talkative and cute 2-year-old.  The home was lovely.  The wife had designed it and the husband built it.  The meal itself was excellent.