Finland

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Andrew's Highlights of Finland:

Getting our first piece of real bread in three months on the Finnair flight from Beijing - it's surprising how good it was after three months of rice and noodles

Seeing Chris (Jen's brother) and having a partner in crime for a little while

Crashing in a great pad...we stayed right downtown in Helsinki at the apartment of a friend of Jen's family...it was perfect (and left us a lot more money for beer)...thanks Eric!

The girls here are really, really ugly. And fat. (I'm happily married, but I'm not blind)

Reindeer sausage with lingonberry sauce....Rudolph is tasty!

Trying to figure out what we were going to see in Scandanavia for three weeks. The lakes area was half closed due to winter coming soon, Lapland (northern Finland) was too far away to be worthwhile for only a couple of days, and we couldn't come up with anything else we wanted to spend our money on, so we headed for Sweden!

Celebrating my birthday on the ferry to Sweden. The three of us had a blast, getting pretty looped, watching bad cruise ship theatre and acrobats followed by Estonian girls singing 'summer of 69' karaoke. Then Chris and I headed off to try and fly the paper-thin Chinese kite train off the back deck. It didn't handle the twenty knot wind at all (duh) and I ended up getting them tangled on one of the main radio arials. Oops...seemed like a good idea at the time. In the morning, they had smoked salmoon at the breakfast buffet, which I of course took as a challenge....yummmm.

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Photos

Reindeer Sausage
Jen and her brother Chris trying the reindeer sausage in Helsinki's central market

Hanging Out
Chris and Andrew take some time out to enjoy the scenery at Suomenlina, the historic island fortress near Helsinki

No Phones in Finland
Because 99% of the population has a cell phone, the Fins decided they didn't need payphones anymore - this is the phone bank at the Helsinki central station. Frustrating!

Our Ferry to Sweden
We were travelling in style on the way from Finland to Sweden - two bars, dance floors and duty free booze

Fire and Ice!
We almost peed our pants laughing at 'Fire and Ice' doing there acrobatic show in the promenade of the ferry to Stockholm

Summer of 69
Estonian girls (some very scary) were loving the 'Summer of 69' karakoe on the ferry. The lyrics are put over cheesy videos that have nothing to do with the songs