I must say it will be a strange feeling for me to meet my parents in a foreign country, however should be interesting to see where dad grew up. Cinthia is quite familiar travelling with her parents, and also has spent a lot more time in Europe than I have, including Amsterdam. The canals, cheeses, windmills, and bikes with baskets and flowers... she does love Amsterdam.
Breakfast today was the best so far on the trip, a showstopper that we are looking forward to bringing our appetite to tomorrow. No need to use up the increasingly scarce vegemite rations for these three mornings. Lots of fresh breads and fruits, very tasty 'fry up' and better coffee than I had had in weeks. The highlight was however the organic cereal that you could mix up yourself.
With this gastromic splurge Cinthia 'accidently' catered too much for herself, or as we say in English, her eyes were bigger than her stomach. Waste not, she may or may not have relocated the spare ham and brie roll into her handbag for a lunchtime snack. I can neither confirm nor deny this alegation.
The main activity of the day was a visit to an island fort, named Suomenlinna. This fort was originally built in the 18th century (by the Swedish as Finland was part of Sweden) as an Eastern naval defence post. The fort, and the entire region of Helsinki and Finland has since had an interesting history of conflict and control, with of course the main players being Sweden, Russia, Germany/ Prussia and England. Looking through centuries it is kind of like Orwell's 1984- there is always a war, however it is just a case of who is fighting who, and who else is aligned. In one war Russia and England are aligned fighting France, then Russia fights England. And so it goes on. In 1809 however the Russians came and took over the fort, and basically Finland, and until 1917 Finland was like a Russian 'protectorate'.
Ironically, the Russian Red and White armies also fought in Finland during the Russian revolution during 1917/18 (whilst WWI was raging), however the White army (which lost the revolution in Russia) was supported by Germany, and ended up defeating the Red army. Finland was liberated, and finally, its own country.
The island is lovely to stroll around, and we witnessed several weddings taking place. It was however quite windy on the island, and it is not hard to imagine how cold this would be come winter. Our stroll around allowed us to view the extent of fortification, with numerous canons still existing. One close island (joined by a small bridge) still operates as a naval academy, and 1000 people call the island home.
After returning to the mainland, we visited the City History Museum, which detailed the history of the country. I can finally say I understand who fought who in the Crimean War, something that had always confused me. Suomelinna saw active duty during this war, with the English targetting it against Russia. The museum was nothing special, however not too bad given it was free.
On our return to the hotel we witnessed the Helsinki Marathon, with the streets lined with people drinking, clapping and taking photos. There were also a few tired competitors running past.
One shock to the system of Helsinki is that it is quite an expensive city, so we have endeavoured to economise, and act as budget travellers. As such, we took our own lunch (and beers) on our trip to the fort, and ate the remainder for dinner. It is always better to go cheap in the expensive countries. I guess we can take solice in the fact that breakfast is gourmet. We also hope to travel like royalty when in Morocco, where dining and accomodation should be significantly cheaper.
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