It really is Baltic

 We left a balmy Blighty (8 degrees) at 6pm heading over to sea our daughter Patch in Helsinki, where she is doing a 10 week placement at the university. When we stepped off the plane it was -3 degrees, and had 4-5 inches of snow covering the ground, which had been cleared from the runway for us to land. A 35 minute train ride saw us meeting Patch at the train station, where we had to arranged to meet her, then across the road for a 10 minutes bus ride to where we were stopping with her in the Töölö district. By the time we arrived it was gone midnight, so off to bed ready for an early start on Sunday.


We set off pretty early considering we were so late in the night (well after Perdita's bedtime). First stop was Sibelius Park where the monument to the composer Jean Sibelius is located. Sibelius is widely considered to be Finland's greatest Composer having helped Finland to develop it's national identity after gaining independence from Russia.




From there we made our way to Cafe Regatta, which as the name suggest is where the locals do their summer boating activities, but not today
Though one brave soul decided he would do a spot of cold water swimming.





Next it was off to the beach Perdita was anxious to try out her new swimming costume, but was left disappointed, when we got there having passed through the dead center of Helsinki (by this I mean there were a lot of cemeteries) 







The 2nd picture is the changing cubicles on the beach and the last one, 2 guys doing some ice fishing just off the beach. I think they caught they were very happy and even started giving each other high fives.

From there we made our way across town, through Kampii and over the esplanade,
past a Lego shop, to the market square where we tried some of the local delicacies (Lapland Style Reindeer, Salmon soup, and deep fried Vendace) which were all really good.









Next up was senate square and Helsinki Cathedral, which is a very impressive building , almost as impressive as the mountain of snow on the Square, which was named Mount Perdita, after the intrepid explorer, who was probably not the 1st to conquer it, but was probably the oldest and most cautious.




After a long hard day sightseeing, we headed of to digs to get freshened up and changed before we headed out for food. Today's offering was at a little Vegetarian resteraunt I had found on the internet. Perdita sometimes struggles to find vegetarian food when we dine out, so with Valentine's day fast approaching I thought I would treat her. In truth eating out in Helsinki is expensive, but vegetarian food seems less so.(not the real reason I treated her honest) The food at "Just Vege" was I have say excellent, Perdita having a Meze and Patch and Myself both opting for a Blue Cheese burger, which in all honesty, was as good as any meat burger I have had for quite some time.



Pongo,Perdita and Patch signing off for today.




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