Helsinki: no time to do it justice
Sea cruise 2015 review continued (see below): OK, before we get to the Vasa, let’s talk about our stop in Helsinki. Yeah, I forgot that our cruise ship stopped in Finland.
Not that I have anything against Finland. In fact, I’m a big fan. A few years ago, when I spent a month In Cali, Colombia, studying Spanish, I met a cool Finnish guy named Walter, whose English was as good as mine – and whose Spanish was even better. Of course, he had a Colombian girlfriend, so that wasn’t particularly surprising.
We even became Facebook friends.
So I was looking forward to our stop in Helsinki. But, again, some cities can’t be explored in the few hours that Celebrity gave us from the moment they let us disembark (10 a.m.) to the moment we were due back on board (4:45 p.m.). Especially when rain threatens our every step.
Again, we opted to buy Hop-on/Hop-off passes. And we did manage to check out one of the city’s main attractions, the Temppeliaukio Church – better known as the Rock Church. Which though it dates back only to the late 1960s, and so is a contrast to virtually every other church that we have seen – or will see – on this trip, the church is an impressive sight. Hey, a half million visitors a year can’t be wrong.
And we spent some time in Stockmann, the department store that reportedly isn’t just the biggest department store in Finland but is the biggest – in terms of area and total sales – in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Iceland as well. Oh, and the Starbucks next door.
But – and here’s the refrain so far – we still had the rain to deal with. So we dried out at a restaurant whose name we got out of Rick Steves’ guidebook, a buffet-type place called Café Lasipalasti, and ate our fill for bargain prices. A premium, actually, because it’s easy to bleed money in the north of Europe.
The rest of the city we saw from the inside of the Hop-on/Hop-off bus. All the way back to the cruise ship, we passed the city by — we even caught a glimplse of Market Square, cenral Helsinki's square that — on sunny days, at least, offers an open market. Things we missed: the draws of Mannerheim Street, the Finnish National Museum of Art, the Finnish National Museum, Finlandia Hall … and so on. So many more reasons to one day return.
And now, for sure …
We look for the Vasa.