June 12, 2017     St. Petersburg-Helsinki

We scheduled the 11:30 train to Helsinki so it would could enjoy breakfast at the hotel before going to the station.  The waiting room at the Finlyandskiy Station is about the size of your living room.  To make it even cozier there was at least two tour groups that had luggage the size of small U-Haul trailer, so there wasn’t much room to even stand.  Traveling with “yuuuge” luggage, and lots of it is typical on trains in Europe.  Sue found a seat and I leaned against a railing.  We boarded and were off on a four hour train ride.  When we arrived one member of the tour group in our car was determined to push her way through the people lined up in the aisle to be the first off the car.  She ran into an immovable object when she kept bumping into Sue.  But enough of that fun.  The weather in Helsinki was miserable, cold mid 40s degF and raining.  Fortunately our hotel wasn’t far from the station.  Our room at the hotel was small but ok.  Shortly after we checked in it stopped raining so we set off to find the Olympic stadium.  It was just a tram ride and a short walk from our hotel.  The tram operator wasn’t too happy that I had to pay for our €4 ride with a €20 bill, but that’s life.  We saw the Paavo Nurmi statue and knew we were on the right track.  There was a lot of construction work going on at the stadium, but the construction gate was open, so we went in.  I got as close as I could to take photos of the Olympic Rings on the stadium when an excavator drove out of the hole next to the stadium.  We talked to the young guys, their English was perfect.  Sue asked how young they started learning it by putting her hand about two feet from the ground, they said yes because Finnish is a small language that not many people speak.  Then it was back to the hotel so Sue could plan where we were going to eat.  She picked a winner.  On the walk to restaurant we walked along a continuous picnic table that had to be over a kilometer long.  There were people sitting on about half the length.  We asked at the restaurant what it was all about and the waitress explained that it was part of “Helsinki Days”, and that last year when the weather was nice the table was full, but the cold weather cut down the crowd this year.  Our dinner was great.  I had a salmon starter that was out of this world, and reindeer as my entrée, Sue had a brisket.  The brisket was so good that she started drooling again when I asked what we had so I could write it down.  Our dinner cost more than our hotel room.  It does stay light later the further north you go.

 

2017 06 12 Helsinki