Helsinki

After two days in Russia, Helsinki seemed much cleaner and less crowded. I could be wrong.
We wanted to see two things there (besides the spectacular Stockmann's department store - which is fantastic) so we hired a taxi to take us to those two places. We got caught in a nasty rain storm at the end of the day and had a lot of rain for the rest of the journey.

Our first stop was the Sibelius monument.
Sibelius was a Finnish composer who wrote "Finlandia" - also known as "Be Still, My Soul" which is found in the LDS hymnbook.

It's supposed to look like organ pipes.

Apparently, some of his followers/fans weren't happy with the monument and so they insisted that this other part be added.

Then we headed over to the infamous Rock Church - which is really called

Temppeliaukio Kirkko.

We'll stick with Rock Church.
They blasted a hole in the ground and then built it.
Very cool.

I don't know how they have children attend this church because you can hear the slightest noise across the room.

We walked down from there to Stockmann's and saw this lovely lady making a flower arrangement.

A typical scene outside the train station.

These strong men hold up the lights for nighttime.
Yes, the days were long on our cruise. Typical sunset was at 10:30pm and it didn't get dark until about 11pm. The blackout curtains in our cabin saved us.

This picture is fuzzy but I had to laugh when I saw this all over Europe - people at a cafe eating outside and completely turned towards the action. In America, I think we try to be more subtle and face each other but why don't we just cut to the chase?

This gentleman was in the Esplanade doing some amazing marionette-ing.

Along the waterfront, there was a huge market.
People selling everything from their potatoes out of their boats to fresh fish to handicrafts.

This man was very good at staying still.

Fresh fish anyone?