We landed in Helsinki in the early morning. I guess it was sometime between 6 AM and 9 AM Helsinki time. It had been an 8 hour flight, and I really wanted to play with the first class media toys they give you, but I was sleepy. I pretty much slept the whole way.

So we landed and checked into our hotel. It was GORGEOUS:

Hotel KAMP had all kinds of history. It was the location for lots of artistic and revolutionary talk. I envision the intelligentsia talking over Frazer chocolates and coffee, pounding the table about ideas to improve the world.

Utter delight. And it was so beautiful. Let us all have beautiful revolutions, friends!

All right, so we did not linger in the hotel room. We had to see the sites.

Chris said, “It’s raining.”

“How long are we here for?” I asked.

“Today, tomorrow, and we leave the next morning.”

“Well, it may be a rainy day, but it’s the only day we’ve got. We must get out and see the city.”

So we did.

Alright. So there was a lovely park that ran down the main street in front of the hotel.

And there were gorgeous buildings all around. The town didn’t become the capital until 1812, so all the achitecture is from the 1800’s. see?

See that big domed building there? Presiding over the city like…Like a god? Well, that’s the Lutheran church. I did not expect the church to have domes, because I thought that was an Eastern thing. But Helsinki rides the line of East and West.

THIS is the Eastern Orthodox Church (look in the back right corner):

It’s kind of steepley, which is what I would have expected of Luther. There is a teeny little gold onion at the top as a concession, like a maraschino cherry.

We walked through the town to see the sites. Like this cafe:

And we heard a military band:

We made our way to the Orthodox church. It was beautiful. Here’s what you see when you look up:

And the iconostasis in the front:

The whole interior was elaborately painted. Here a piece of the vaulted ceiling and a pillar:

Yes, I enjoyed that church. I bought some postcards there, and sent them to a few of you, my readers. Thing was, Helsinki charged RIDICULOUS amount for a postcard. I figured, the church should at least get my money if I was going to be robbed. A whole euro for one post card!

The next day, we did visit the Lutheran church. It was startlingly plain.
White
White
Basically, the best you were going to get was the view from the outside. I really hate to take that metaphor too far.

Chris said, “We have to go to this one store, Stockmann’s.”

“What is it?”

“Apparently, it’s this great department store that was really popular with Russians during the soviet period. They came over to Helsinki to go to Stockmann’s. It was so common that a lot of Russians thought that the name of the city was Stockmann’s.”

“Let’s go!”

We kept looking for that IKEA look. You know? It was everywhere in Stockmann’s. All the sheets and curtains and kitchen utensils had that look. It was totally IKEA in everything but the price. Wow! No 2-dollar measuring cups there. More like 15 dollars.

I bought an illustrated version of the Kalevala in finnish. Do I read finnish? No. But…well…it’s a national epic poem that was never written or read, only spoken, for century upon century. I think that if I sat and read it out loud, even not understanding it, I will get more of the beauty of the phrasing…

Plus it was a paperback and therefore cheaper that way.

We went to the Stockmann’s grocery section and bought food for a room picnic. We were tired, and it was time for eating and sleeping.

Back to our gorgeous hotel.

We decided to check out a nearby fortress island tomorrow: Suomenlinna. We’ll have to take a ferry. Should be exciting.

“Good night, baby.”