Aug 24 – Helsinki

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CONGRATULATIONS to Rebecca and Brendan on their new son, Loyd William Hurley!!! He arrived on Aug 22, weighing in at 8 pounds 10 ounces. Mom, Baby and Dad are all doing well, and probably very glad to be started on this next wonderful step in their family even if they have to give us sleeping for the foreseeable future.

Today we are in Helsinki Finland. We got up about 8:00 and found another bright sunny day with slight winds but a bit chilly temperature. This far north, the sun has been up for a long time and will still be in the sky late into the evening (not as much if we were here in June, but it is still more than back in St Louis). However it was an hour earlier than when we went to bed – adjusted the clock one hour, and we will lose still another hour tonight (Arrrgh). Anyway, it did warm up later in the morning and was quite comfortable, even without jackets.

We had the usual breakfast and then went back to the room to get ready for our tour. We did not have to assemble in the lounge until 10:20, so we had plenty of time to pack our bag and watch some of the “Wake Show”. This is a shipboard program recorded each night for cruisers to watching the morning to learn about the next things coming up. One item they mentioned was not to leave food on the balcony or the birds would be attracted (don’t know what they would say about actually feeding the birds). The other was to emphasize the need to fully complete immigration paperwork into Russia the next morning.

We went down to our tour and were soon shown to the bus. Today’s tour was a 3-hour tour of the city highlights. Actually Helsinki doesn’t seem to have a whole lot of highlights. For several centuries it was part of Sweden and then became annexed to Russia. Only in 1917 did it become a country itself. There are about the same number of square miles as in Germany, but they are just 5.4 million citizens in the whole country (compared to Germany’s 80+ million). About 20% of the population lives in or near Helsinki, so the rest of the country must be pretty sparsely populated. Both Finnish and Swedish are mandatory classes in grade school and everyone is bi-lingual (ex: street sign appear in both languages on each intersection). Usually a 3rd language is also learned (English, Russian, French, etc). Anyway, we did not have any difficulty communicating with anyone today.

The tour stopped at 3 locations. The first was at a monument dedicated to the composer Jean Sibelius. He is something of a national hero, considered the greatest composer ever to come from Finland. This monument is kind of modernist (from our point of view). We drove past their Olympic Stadium and past the statue of “the Flying Fin – who won 8 gold medals and 3 silver over three Olympics). Then we went to the Church of the Rock (called Temppeliaukio Church). This church is hewn out of a rock formation. It isn’t especially large but somehow it has incredible acoustics. Besides having solid granite walls all around (except the front entrance), the ceiling is covered with a dome of copper wire. We drove past the bay and saw a few of their 5 ice breakers which are used to keep the harbor open during the winter. Finally the bus took us to the Senate Square, which is surrounded by cultural, political, religious, and educational building. They are all impressive buildings and have a collection of souvenir stores around the adjacent streets. After that the bus took us back to the ship. Frankly we are glad to be able to say we visited Helsinki (add another country to our list of places visited) but it wasn’t the most impressive place we’ve ever visited. We got back to the ship about 1:45 feeling that we had made the right choice – a simple tour before tomorrow. There were other, more robust and pricier tours, but this was probably the right choice today.

We ate up at the buffet lunch again with a view looking at the adjacent cruise ship Brilliance of the Seas. Then we went down to the cabin to check e-mail, read books, do puzzles, or take naps – whatever we wanted that was restful.

The other day, we went to hear about future cruises. We also looked for a schedule of when the Alaska cruises will occur in 2015. At this time that schedule has not been published. Since several of you have asked about joining us on a cruise that is not quite so elaborate, we will continue to monitor this Princess schedules and will let everyone know when it becomes available. Then we can have more serious conversations to see if anyone is actually is interested.

We had another delicious dinner this evening. We both had the bay scallop appetizer. Janet had the Beef Consume soup and David had the Caesar Salad. For the entrée, Janet had Steak Diane and David had Salmon steak. For dessert Janet had the apple pie ala mode and David had banana split (this is not on the menu but Bill – table next to us – has been teaching the waiter and tonight David had one too). We also finished our bottle of wine from yesterday.

We then went to the theater. Tonight was a very talented violinist who performed a wide variety of music, including classical, jazz, gypsy, and movie themes. We thoroughly enjoyed this performance. We got some last minute instructions about our landing tomorrow and then we went back to our cabin to get everything ready. We lose another hour’s sleep tonight, so that will about wrap up this episode of our adventures.

As we have said, the next 2 days in St Petersburg are going to be very busy. For that reason, please do not expect any blog updates for a couple of days. But we will catch up with the postings as soon as we can.

The Internet is exptremely slow tonight, so Helsinki pictures will be added at a later date.

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