Helsinki, Finland

Both of us woke up around 3ish from jetlag, which was about the same time as game 4 for the Raptors vs Bucks, so I followed the play-by-play online.

Breakfast was great in our hotel, which was really busy with business types having breakfast meetings (or pre-meetings).

It was a nice sunny day in Helsinki, with a high near 20C. The forecast called for clouds and rain the next couple days, so we went on a 90 minute boat cruise around the islands, included in the Helsinki Card. The scenery reminded us of being in the Muskokas. The boat cruise was a good way to orient ourselves.

Had lunch in the old market on the waterfront, which was quite tasty. Browsed the souvenir stalls and bought a couple small things for our key shelf.

We then walked over to Ateneum, Finland’s premier art gallery. It was cool, including a Van Gogh. (The museum was the world’s first to acquire a Van Gogh).

Ateneum is on a plaza across from the train station with interesting architecture. Took pics of most of the surrounding buildings, lots of Finnish art nouveau.

Got back to the hotel around 4pm. We have a sauna in our room, which is fairly common. They take their saunas very seriously here - in fact, the word “sauna” is Finnish. There’s about one sauna for every two people in Finland.

Pushed the ‘on’ button and then waited an hour for it to heat up. (There’s a little sign in the bathroom with instructions on how to use the sauna - first step, put away your cell phone). Followed the rest of the steps to have a proper Finnish sauna experience!

Tonight we had dinner reservations at Shelter, a restaurant on the waterfront close to where we were earlier this afternoon. We’re becoming quite familiar with the route from our hotel to the waterfront :)

Once again dinner was excellent, and we were glad we had a reservation. For appetizers, we had octopus with romesco sauce and white fish ceviche. For our mains, we tried the linguine with chanterelles, green apples, and pistachios and the grilled perch with roe, new potatoes, and broccolini. Everything was excellent.

We took a different route back to our hotel for variety. The sun was just setting (it was 10pm). Our walk took us past the Helsinki Cathedral, an evangelical cathedral that features prominently in skyline pics. Walked up the many stairs to the top, took a bunch of pics. Got home and crashed.