Helsinki

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Today was a bit of a laidback day compared to my usual pace of sightseeing. I started the day with a little shopping. I have been wanting to buy a new shirt and found two that I think will work. I’m not a big fan of clothes shopping, but I rather enjoyed this experience. For one thing, there were no crowds of tourists jostling for position in line! After lunch I visited the Design Museum (only a moderate number of tourists there). Apparently Finland is noted for its designers and there is a room in the museum called Utopia Now with some of their greatest hits: Nokia phones, Fiskar scissors, the game Angry Birds. Later in the day I caught the 15-minute ferry to the island of Suomenlinna which was a fortress for a couple of centuries, but in recent years has been given over to parkland. It is a pleasant place to stroll and to admire the view past the guns over the Gulf of Finland.

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