Helsinki, Finland

I must admit I couldn’t put Finland on a map before this trip.  The Baltic sea itself was something that I was only barely aware of.  So Finland.  I walked around a bit.  Didn’t have a lot of time because I had training in the morning, but I got to see a bit of the immediate area around the center of the city.  There was of course the new mall that looks like every mall in every place in the world, but outside on the street there was a great deal of interesting architecture.  The art deco train station was a highlight and there were several large old buildings that seemed in a baroque style.




Bike culture seems alive and well in Finland too.  There are lots of bike trails on the roads and some of the sidewalks also have bike trails with different surfaces to mark them.  So if you are walking on a concrete sidewalk you may then also have a paved bike lane on the same level and then a curb before the street.  It seems like many people are biking, not just young trendy people, though there are those as well, but older folks coming from the supermarket, or working class people coming home.  I noticed this in Germany as well.  I saw a lot of cool, very personalized bikes too.







We had a late glassblowing show after we came back to the ship.  But it didn’t feel late.  It wasn’t even dusk by 9pm when we started the show.  It actually got brighter around 10pm when the sun dipped below the clouds that were hanging just above the horizon, and the following two pictures are at midnight after the show.