Hopping on then hopping off in Helsinki

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The evening before we were due to arrive in Helsinki was an informal one. I never know the difference between informal and casual. I understand that there are no fashion police aboard any MSC ship which is surprising since it is an Italian Company. An Italian can wear a sack of spuds and still come out of it looking like Armani!! Whereas most Brits wear a sack of spuds and they end up blending in with the contents of the sack!! However, there are far more German's aboard this ship than Brits so I think we'll be OK. As it turns out, I wore exactly the same type of apparel for this informal evening as I have done for casual evenings. The only difference is that I wore shoes rather than trainers. Roisin is smart but casual 24/7. Now there's another status. Is 'smart but casual'a step up from casual but not quite informal OR…is smart but casual another way of saying informal? Whatever the occasion, Mr Primark and Ms Matalan will save the day!!

Ik'lil the waiter was on good form. Over the past few days our seating area has become more and more sparse as people who were originally seated in the vicinity of our table had chosen to eat in the more central area of the restaurant, changed to the earlier sitting or had chosen to eat ‘anytime'. Either way, Ann, Pam, Roisin and I were Iklil's sole surviving customers! This was borne out by him offering seconds for most of the dishes and making conversation for longer than he had done so far. It transpires that he is pissed off with his job. (Welcome to the real world, Iklil!!) He is missing is family terribly especially his newborn child. His contract does not finish until the end of February 2010. After returning home, he is hoping to get a work permit for the USA and join his uncle where is working in Princess Line. Life on board for him consists of working 12 hours a day, eating and sleeping. He doesn't even use Skype or any other multimedia to keep in touch with his loved ones, as it is too expensive for him. You'd think they'd give him a staff discount or something. He's not even guaranteed to get time off and go ashore to an Internet café. I think that must be because if he's not working, he's sleeping. Well that's what he told us anyway!

After our dinner we decided to have a wander and were drawn to music coming from the Caruso Lounge one deck up from our restaurant on deck 7. A sign at the entrance to the Caruso said ‘Grease Party – looking for the new John Travolta and Olivia Newtron-Bomb!!'

‘Oh! Bloody hell' I thought as I followed Roisin in to the lounge, this is going to be painful How wrong could I be. This was all down to our two new best friends Brian and Beryl.

As we moved further in to the Caruso there was something happening on the dance floor. There, in front of us stood 5 couples. All the ladies had been given pink skirts to wear whilst the gents had donned white t-shirts. They were lined up and the compere was doing his multi language thing. There seems to be most nations represented. Even the Germans!!

‘And the UK entry is….Beryl and Brian from Wigan…!!!'

Well blow me down with a feather and call me Sharon!!!

At that moment ‘Grease Lightning' started to blurt out from the PA and Beryl and Brian broke in to their ‘routine'. I don't know about trying to emulate a dance routine by ‘Sandy' and ‘Danny'. It was more like a comedy routine that Bud Abbott and Lou Costello would have been proud of!! At one point when Brian attempted to pick Beryl up and swing her, he completely lost his balance and ended up flat on his back. I'll give him his due, the show must go on and he still writhed on the floor like a snake in time to the music. Although to be honest, he looked more like he was having a seizure!! Who knows, perhaps he was and we all just stood there cheering and clapping!!! The entertainment crew were there on hand to help with the more difficult dance moves although they seemed to make things go wrong deliberately. I'm sure this was all for comic effect! Lets face it, when the audience is so diverse. The best form of humour has to be visual.

The following morning the ship docked in Helsinki bang on time at 8am. Helsinki was founded by King Gustavus Vasa of Sweden. In those days, founding cities was like opening a new Morrison's or Tesco!! Just like the high competitiveness an intensity of the supermarket chain, Helsinki was founded as a new trading post in Southern Finland and a competitor to Talinn on the other side of the Gulf of Finland!

The clocks went back 1 hour yet again last night. We were now 3 hour behind the UK.

A front-page notice in the daily programme stated that a shuttle bus service would be laid on from the ship to the city centre. That was the good news. The ‘not so good' news was that it cost €10 return.

Having taken the ferry across from Stockholm to Helsinki some years earlier, if my memory serves me well, the terminal is only a 5-minute walk from the centre. No shuttle necessary.

Roisin and I departed from the ship shortly after 9:15. ‘Hmmm…I don't remember this, where are the buildings and the main roads??' I thought to myself as we walked through the somewhat deserted dock estate. What I failed to realise was that there are actually 3 ports in Helsinki, two of which are used regularly by cruise ships. On my last visit, I docked at South Harbour located downtown. Larger ships, such as the MSC Opera use the Hernesaari Cruise Ship Dock in the West Harbour. From here, the distance to town centre is approximately 2 miles. This took us about 50 minutes before we turned the corner in to Esplanadi. It seemed longer somehow. It usually does when you don't know where you're going!!

We strolled part way down Esplanadi stopping at the Havis Amanda statue to get our bearings. Havis Amanda is a mermaid who stands on seaweed as she rises from the water, with four fish spouting water at her feet and surrounded by four sea lions. She is depicted leaning backwards as if to say goodbye to her element. This supposes to symbolise the rebirth of Helsinki. Wow!! That's a bit deep and profound for a Monday morning. It just looks like any other bronze cast statue one can find around the world; turned green with age and covered in bird shit!!!

We decided to keep on heading down Esplanadi to Market Square then up to the cathedral.

Market Square (Kauppatori) is perched right next to the harbours edge. Now, there are 2 things you need to know abojut Market Square. Firstly…it's square!! And secondly..well you get the picture anyway!!

The first part of the market concentrated on the vending of all sorts of food from fresh fish to greasy looking thin pasty type snacks to Belgian waffles. Not sure if these can be called Begian waffles under EU regulations as they are not being made in Belgium but they looked and smelled like those available along the promenade in Oostende (and at some Brewer Fayes as well!!) At the far end of the square, were many stalls where you could by Finnish souvenirs, t-shirts, furs and other ‘suomiin' handicraft.

We cut across and headed up one of the many side streets toward the cathedral (Tuomiokirkko) The white church, as it is known was built as a tribute toTsar Nicholas I of Russia and was known as St. Nicholas's church up to the independence of Finland in 1917. The cathedral has become a very distinct landmark of Helsinki and should be on the tourist route of all city tours. There was method in our madness in heading for this focal point of Senate Square. As most people know, the best way to see a city in such a short space of time is to use the ho-ho service. This is a hop-on, hop-off bus service that visits all the majort attractions and sights of a city. All cities have this service and we were sure that Helsinki was no exception.

It wasn't long until we were queing we some other like minded tourists awaiting the arrival of the next bus. As it arrived there was a mad rush to the conductor to purchase tickets. Roisin and I pushed as impatiently as everyone else.

I happened to catch the back end of the ticket man saying,'…3 adults? Certainly. That will be €90, please.' The worse thing was, the soft bastard got his wallet out and paid!!! At that point Roisin and I stopped pushing and retreated from the maddening crowd!" Anybody must be mad to pay €30 (£27 or $44) for a hop on/off option. I wasn't mad, though… I was bloody furious!! It wasn't so much paying £54 which was bad enough but as it was already approaching 12:30 and we had to be back on board the ship by 3pm, it was rather pricey for a ‘bus ride'!!! The buses run every half hour so we'd only get to see a few of the sights properly otherwise it's just a case of staying on the bus for the complete circuit. You can do this on public transport for a fraction of the cost.

We decided to head to Sibelius Park to see the momument to Finland's greatest composer and to visit the church in the rock. This can only be descriibed as an architectrural experiment yet it's one of the most visited tourist attractions in Helsinki.

We identified the bus we needed was a number 24. What we failed to identify was where we got the bus from. We headed for the location we were told and weaved in and out of a dozen or so bus stands but the number 24 was no where to be seen. As we had been walking now for some hours and this was, by far the hottest day of the cruise so far, we decided to give this up as a bad idea and agreed it was time to head back to the ship for a spot of lunch and chill out.

We headed back down to the Esplanadi and took one last look behind us in the direction of Uppenski Cathedral towering above the Eastern end of the harbour. This is Europe's largest orthodox church whose dome and towers are crowned by 13 gold cuppolas. Then it was gone. Heading back toward the ship. We had planned on taking in a quick game of mini golf on our way back to the Opera. It was a very picturesque setting on the shore of the western harbour. Unfortunately it had closed for either a late lunch or an early dinner!!.

After a bite to eat it was up on deck to take one last look at Finland. Ooh! It was rather hot. Many of the passengers had already taken advantage of this weather on the sun deck. As the official shore excursions were now returning, the sun deck was becoming like a refugee camp. There was no decorum. It was a case of finding a spare piece of deck and put your sun lounger there!!

At 4pm the hooter sounded and the lines cast adrift. We were once more on our way to our next port of call, Stockholm.

Helsinki was a strange day. I know the city has so much more to offer than what we saw. This may have been a case of bad planning or misunderstanding. We're sure to visit Helsinki again some day and this time we'll make like boy scouts and ‘be prepared'!!

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