Ten I's and Ten A's

Hey Folks. Only one month to go before heading home. That means I have to write two blog postings everyday to get caught up. I suppose the post on Heather and I going grocery shopping will have to be dropped. Maybe I'll have to skip the one about me doing laundry too. Possibly I might have time to squeeze in the one about vacuuming. We have some really great photos from that day.

Part 2 of the Nordic adventure is less about action and more about relaxation. We did quite a bit of walking and traveling in Stockholm and Copenhagen and just sort of took it easy in Helsinki and Tallinn.

After the best flight in years (and it was full of Norwegian Hell's Angels too), we took the city bus into town and arrived at the coolest art deco train station ever.

I was totally surprised. There was a lot of art deco architecture throughout the whole city. It was kind of neat because many times the buildings were totally enclosed because of the cold winters, so when I would expect a lot of design elements to be around facades or windows, they were in the foyers inside of the entrances. It made me want to go to Miami now.

We found out pretty quickly who is the most famous Finnish designer. Alvar Aalto has buildings across the city and they are stellar (although he may have been a fascist). Here is a bookstore he designed. Take that Chapters.

We just may steal this idea and make a Russian themed bar in Vancouver. This one is Kafe Mockba and owned by a couple of Finnish movie directors. They were playing old scratchy Russian folk records on an old gramophone too. Very cool.

We went out for dinner to at an old Helsinki restaurant that was...art deco! This place had a mural though. I had reindeer meatballs---pretty good, but I think I prefer either Swedish meatballs or plain reindeer stew. Heather had herring fillets. They were very strong tasting. She was quite happy that she didn't order the deep fried herring that is just like a herring ball of really small ones all rolled and fried together. Anyway, it was a nice restaurant.

It was warm and sunny for us in Helsinki, which was nice. I got mad at our hotel because they were supposed to have one free weekly public session at the hotel's Sauna, but cancelled it on the morning we were there because some large group wanted to book it. We both tried our best North American complaining, but all we were offered was a discount on booking a private session. I will, however, never stay at the Hotel Katajanokka again. I'm sure you will all remember the name too.

The predominate Christian religion in Finland is Lutheran. They built a fine white church.

We spent too much time (and almost too much money) in the Iittala, store as it is one of our favourites. They have so much wicked 'stuff'.

We went to the museum of Modern Art, but it was too expensive to go in, so we just walked around the building which was ok, but not mind blowing. There was a neat piece in the lobby.

Helsinki doesn't operate an underground but has an extensive tram system. We took tram 3 around a large loop of the city. The windows were dirty so none of my pictures turned out, but it was cool. Oh, I forgot, we almost made it to a Finnish Elite League hockey game the night before, but it started at 4:00 when we were told it started at 7:00. I blamed the corporate TV headquarters in Toronto. Jerks.

We stopped for lunch at an outdoor market and had, you guessed it, reindeer sausage and some delicious pancake/crepe thing covered in cream and strawberries. A good lunch.

That was sure an action packed day....I don't know what I really meant by we didn't do lots?? It was very easy and relaxing city to get around. It was quiet too. Like really quiet. There was minimal noise pollution. There weren't loads of people yelling and being obnoxious. One thing we found funny was no pedestrians will walk against the crossing signal. There are boulevards where you can see about 300 meters in each direction and they will still wait for the green man to come on before walking across. At first, we walked with impunity, but it became so obvious to us that we were breaking the norm that we couldn't do it anymore--even at night!

After lunch, we hopped on a ferry to the island of Suomenlinna, which was a short 15 minute ride away. It's an old fortress island that is now a national park. It has been used in the defence of Helsinki for a very long time. We walked the whole thing and pretended to shoot cannons at Swedish ships--Well, I did. There are a bunch of islands surrounding the inner harbour to the city and the water is very shallow in many places. The only way to get in was through very defined lanes and this island could defend all of them.

One of the coolest things about the island was there are a number of residences on the island. They are leased/granted out to artists who work on the island and agree to keep the houses up, so all your neighbors are painters and potters and the like, while the historical houses are all maintained at a very low cost to the park service. There is even a hostel in the old barracks. Great idea.

This part was very relaxing.

We went out for dinner and stopped off at a pub before heading home. We grabbed a board game from the stack and started at it. We chose Scrabble.

It was pretty dang hard. Then we took a look at the board for the distribution of letters.

Man those Finns love their I's

We took the ferry the next morning across the Baltic Sea to Tallinn, Estonia. The ferry went right past Suomenlinna, as it was the route.

The weather was poor for us in Tallinn, but that didn't stop us! We arrived at the port and spent all of our time in the old city until we left the next day. The old city is very well preserved. I've always wanted to go to a 'real' former USSR state and get some great kitch items. The Estonians really hated the Russians though and have almost expunged all things Russian from the country and are very nationalistic and proud of their own distinct history and culture. I think I appreciated that more then a red star pin, but that still would have been nice.

This was our hotel courtyard.

We went for lunch at one of those weird medieval re-enactment restaurants. I have never had so much fun eating and ordering. I got a bowl of field mushroom soup with a strange roll and soft cheese and a tankard of honey ale. The restaurant makes their own beer using the same recipe as in the 15th century. A tankard, man. A tankard.

Tallinn was gorgeous. The whole old town has been restored and there are church towers and spires around every corner.

We climbed this tower. It was looooonnnng climb up, but the view was worth it. Heather didn't like the height so much. I'm funny--Sometimes heights bother me and sometimes they don't. I had the strangest panic attack on a chairlift at Mt. Baker once. It was only about 20 ft high and there was a safety bar. Weird.

We went out to a medieval basement bar dinner. The beer was very cloudy.

And finally, some day/night shots of the main square. Night/day rather.

I forgot to mention how much cheaper Estonia was than the rest of Scandanavia. Remarkably cheaper. When you get two pastries and coffee for eight Euros and think that's cheap it means that it's  a significant difference.

Blast-er from the Past-er

The Most Beautiful Cat in the World

Baltic Cats!

An Estonian giant--Ten Pound Tommy.

See ya later!

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