Day 3 Helsinki - some small bits and pieces and a ferry to Stockholm

26 October
Day 3 Helsinki

It's snowing!  It snows allllll day today and it's beautiful!  And kind of annoying at times.

My lightning visit to Helsinki is finished today.  I get an overnight ferry to Stockholm tonight but still have a full day today.

My first stop after breakfast is the Temppeliaukio Church.  It's a modern church that is carved out of a cliff and it's absolutely gorgeous.  The beautiful stone walls, a fantastic wooden slatted dome on the ceiling and a really nice looking organ.  What a great church!  So completely different to the standard cathedral style of stuff I've been seeing for the last month or so.  I was quite enjoying the peace and solitude in the church when a Chinese tour group then a couple of families turned up and ruined the serenity.

After that I went to the Finnish History Museum.  It was another museum housed in a great building but overall I thought the museum was pretty boring.  It was small and other than a few pieces I didn't really get much out of it.  That said - there was an interesting exhibit on the ground floor with a bunch of photographs celebrating 100 years of Finnish independence.

Off to the National Library after that which is a fantastic library building.  I couldn't read any of the books but it's a great museum to walk around (quietly of course).

Then a quick look at the orthodox cathedral across the road which was a lovely pure white domed church.  The star of the church was the organ at the back though.  Fantastic.

Wandered around a bit more in the snow, stopped for a cold drink then grabbed my bag from the hostel and went to the ferry terminal.

So it's not really a ferry I'm on but a small cruise ship.  There are bars and nightclubs and poker machines everywhere.

I've got a private cabin which is nice.

I splurged and paid for the buffet dinner on the ship hoping there would be some great Nordic cuisine.  And there was.  You could almost call the buffet an art installation called The Many Faces of a Herring.  Heaps of food and it was all tasty.  And I completely over-ate.  But so did everyone else.  I swear there were people who went back for 10 plates of food.

Since it gets dark so early here at this time of year there's not much to see outside so I'm just hiding in my cabin, catching up on my blog and regretting how much I ate.