Day 13 - Helsinki

Those days of wonderful weather are now long gone! We woke to a cold and wet Helsinki but we were looking forward to exploring the city, so we weren't too bothered by the rain. We went down to breakfast and met Lynn who said Eric had gone to a local Land Rover dealer to sort out his smashed passenger window.

We had our breakfast and then walked across the road from the hotel to buy tickets for a bus tour of Helsinki. The tour, which lasted an hour and a half, was well worthwhile and gave us a good idea of the layout of the city as well as its history.

Our hotel, the Hotel Kamp.

 

On the bus.

Shortly after the tour started, I had the first of several text messages from Lynn. Poor Eric had real problems as he had just been told that there are no windows for his car in Finland! The only solution was to get a window sent by DHL or Fedex across from England to one of the next towns we are visiting and have it fitted there. Eric decided on Oulu, where we will be in two days time and arranged with his UK dealer to have the window sent to the hotel we have booked. There followed more calls to the Land Rover dealer in the UK to arrange for the Finnish dealer to be ready and waiting to fit the window. I just hope it all works out as after Oulu, we are into the wilds of northern Finland, where a repair will be really difficult to organise.

Whilst all this was going on, our tour continued around the city and below are some of the photos I took. Apologies for the quality but they were all taken through the rain-splattered windows of the coach.

We drove through Senate Square with its statue of Tsar Alexander 1.

The Russian Orthodox Church, the largest in Northern Europe.

After about an hour we stopped at the Sibelius monument where hundreds of tourists were crawling, literally, all over the monument. There were hundreds of Far Eastern tourists, either Japanese or Chinese.

 

The Olympic Stadium built for the 1952 Olympics, which were to have been in 1944, but because of the war were re-scheduled for eight years later.

We got back to our hotel around 1pm and immediately walked down to the market square to catch the ferry that takes you across to the sea fortress, Suomenlinna. It is a world heritage site for its military architecture.

The ferry across to the island.

The ferry journey takes about twenty minutes and as we approached the island, it was shrouded in mist.

We left the ferry and stopped at a restaurant for a quick lunch before walking on across the island to see the fortress.

The World Heritage sign.

Wendy and Peter following behind me.

We came to the fortress which is a huge complex of massive walls with many cannon pointing out to sea from the top of the fortifications. On one of the cannon we read the date, 1875.

 

 

We walked all the way through the fortress to the King's Gate, so named after King Adolf Frederick of Sweden, the founder of the fort in 1752.

We walked back to the ferry and returned to Helsinki. When we got off the ferry, there were thousands of cheering Finns who were in the market square celebrating yesterday's victory of the Finnish ice hockey team over Sweden in the World Championship final.

 

As we walked into the hotel, we were met by Kenny and DeeAnne who had just arrived on the afternoon ferry from Estonia. Bob & Thelma had also reached the hotel and had checked into their room. Shortly after, Ahmad, Reza and Darvish arrived from their three day trip to St.Petersburg.

Wendy then went for a short walk to see the Evangelical Lutheran Cathedral with its life size statues of Martin Luther.

 

So, we are all back together again and ready for the drive through Finland. It will be great to have everyone doing the same thing again and, with luck, we will get Eric's car repaired in the next couple of days.

The adventure continues.....