Helsinki, Finland
Woman in the Middle | September 22, 2013I am not quite done with our vacation adventures!
After our two very busy days in St. Petersburg, Helsinki was like a vacation! No worries about pick pockets, no need to kill ourselves with sight-seeing. Our friends had things they wanted to see and we had different things we wanted to see so we each went our separate ways. Also we didn’t take a tour at this stop so for the first time Hubby and I were really on our own, in a foreign country no less! Of course we were in a Scandinavian country and the level of English spoken in Finland was pretty high. When we got lost we just asked and could usually find someone who could help us. It helped to have a map we could point to when the bus driver didn’t speak much English (and they usually didn’t).
Hubby and I went out to the Seurasaari Open Air Museum where historic buildings from all over Finland have been preserved. It is set on an island covered with trees. After the two days we had in Russia, being out in a bit of nature was a wonderful change of pace. It was quite easy to get to on the Number 24 bus, once we figured that all out, Finnish not being a language we are familiar with!
A forest warden’s cottage
A couple of the houses had these funny beds that pushed in to make them smaller and pulled out at bedtime. It was explained to us that people were into classical style arrangements where the furniture was up against the walls and there was a large open space in the middle of the room. In order to accomplish this in the bedroom they created these beds that shrank during the day to make more space.
This church was quite old, dating to the 1500s I think.
This is a hooded crow, which we saw in a number of places, but I managed to get a photo of one while we were at the open air museum. They looked like the black crows we have here in California but were pretty black and gray.
When we got back in the city and were walking around, we saw “ale” everywhere. We finally figured out that it was Finnish for “sale.”
I thought it was funny to see a poster for Monster’s University in Finnish!
Back in the city, we had a bit of a problem figuring out where to catch the bus back to where our ship was docked. We imposed on a young man who used his smart phone to tell us where to catch the bus. We walked over to where he said to go but you know how bus stops can be. There you are on a street with just a pole and a sign to tell you that a bus stop is there. It always makes me nervous. Is it really the right stop? We saw the bus coming and I thought to myself that I would show the bus driver my trusty map to make sure it was the correct bus. Then, as the bus pulled up in front of us who should I see sitting inside waving at us but our friends, Barb and Jim, coming back from their adventures. Then I knew I was at the correct stop!
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