Helsinki, June 7

Early, early, this morning the sky was very overcast and grey. Today I had the early tour and Jill has the afternoon tour. Bless her soul, she got up early with me to have breakfast and went back to bed after I left.

My tour was excellent! Our guide, Liina, was fantastic and had a great sense of humor. We went out of the city quite directly to the countryside where all the roads were bordered by wild flowers, mostly Queen Ann's lace and lupines in both pink and purple along with smaller white and yellow flowers that I couldn't identify. It was gently rolling country and heavily forested. About 65% of Finland is forests. Many of the larger roads near Helsinki have tall fences on each side to keep the moose from jumping onto the roadway. We did not see any moose today, although Liina said that occasionally a tour will see one. We saw several hares in the fields, but nothing bigger. (I did see two moose once on a bus tour out of Moscow to Vladimir.)

Our first stop was at the Old and New churches at an area called Sipoo. The old church seen here was built about 1450, and the new one is only about 100 years old. The old church was originally Roman Catholic, but was "converted" to Lutheran later. Now it is a popular spot for weddings. The decorative work at the top is all bricks.

Our next stop, also in Sipoo, was at a private home. We were welcomed by the lady of the house who was named Harriet, and who spoke very good English. Her husband was also there but does not speak English so he chatted with our driver. Their gardens were lovely with fruit trees in full bloom as well as roses and all sorts of other things. The original part of the house was quite old, and the whole place was filled with antiques and trophies won by her father and grandfather both of whom were race car drivers, and evidently very successful at it. They served us coffee, tea, apple cake, excellent vanilla ice cream with whole blueberries in it, and a most interesting thing called Karelin pie. The latter was a small oval pastry about 2x4 inches made of rye flour and filled with lightly buttered rice then baked. It was excellent.

While we were at the house the cloud cover burned off, so our return to Helsinki was in bright sunshine. We were supposed to stop at Senate Square to see the Lutheran Cathedral which is a huge white edifice with a dome, but there was a regional expo going on and there was no place to park the bus near the square. Our driver eventually found a spot and parallel parked the bus! It was too far back down a cobblestone hill for me to attempt to walk back to the square, and it was mostly a stop to let people off who wanted to stay in town. I did get back to the ship in time to give Jill one of the Karelin pies that I made off with for her.

I spent most of the afternoon watching activities in the harbor and on the pier. There are lots of little and not so little islands in the harbor and lots of small boats and ferries going back and forth. I also chatted with several nice couples from New Zealand, which is still on my list of places to go one of these days.