Day 31 - 21/8/11 - Sunday

Honesty would tell me to advise people the following- Helsinki, whilst a nice city, and seemingly quite a nice place to live (if you can manage a snowy cold winter) is not somewhere we would advise people to seek out as a tourist destination. For us, it was a link in a chain that would take us from St. Petersburg to Netherlands, with some opportunistic stoppovers in between. Tallin was amazing, and we are hopefully that Copenhagen will be as good as people advise us it is. Helsinki is a nice enough city, just not full of stand out tourist attractions.

Post another nutritous and delicious breakfast, we have a challenge to fill in the day with activities. Although there were museums of History, Military, Modern and Period Art, we decided that it would be unwise to go too hard on the museums too early, and there would be plenty more museums in other European cities. The musuems in Amsterdam we expect to be first class. Given it was a relatively sunny day another outdoor day must be the preferred option.

First was a circular tram ride around Helsinki's 2 central lakes, past a couple of interesting churches, the major amusement park, the Olympic stadium (they hosted the Olympics in 1952, prior to Melbourne) and the Opera house. Helsinki has a small Metro and some long distance trains, however is more reliant upon street trams, which in most areas share the roads with cars. Some of the trams are painted green and yellow, seemingly copying Melboure's old tram colour scheme.

The car culture is not as strong as Melbourne though, with plenty more bikes. There are two interesting aspects with the bike culture Firstly, in many situations, including central street malls, most bikes are not chained up, inferring crime, or bike theft is uncommon. I'm not sure my bike (or Cinthia's with the pretty basket) would last very long in Melbourne unchained down on the St. Kilda foreshore. Secondly, helmets are not compulsory, however are worn by about 50% of people. Most of the riding appears on shared footpaths, and not the roads.

Our first stop was actually a church (again) however this church was significant insofar as it was built out of a rockface, and hence it has solid rockwalls for 270 degrees. It was ok to look at, however not quite St. Isaac's or St. Basil's Cathedrals. It is worth mentioning that Finland, like the rest of Scandanavia and Germany, is primarily Lutheran (similar to our Protestant/Aglican) churches. The Protestant churches are different to both Catholic and Orthodox churches, as they do not have the exquisite furnishings. The wealth on display in Roman churches (whilst the poor suffered) was a key reason why Martin Luther broke away from the Catholic church. Hence the churches bearing his name (and other Protestant churches) are no longer jaw dropping once walking inside.

Secondly we visited another church, however this is now a museum, which we decided not to enter.

We had our lunch in a park, with a couple of beers. I'd like to say sneaky lunchtime beers, however the big 500ml are not as sneaky as the normal 375 ml size.

Post lunch we visited the Amusement park, which actually had quite a few 'crazy puke' rollercoaster type rides. I am always 'Amused' by peoples' desire to go on these rides, and I was not about to try my luck after having some beers at lunchtime. After refusing to go on the rides or purchase an ice cream, Cinthia now has resorted to calling me 'Amusement park Grinch'..... so I made her walk 5 kilometres back to the hotel, instead of returning by tram ;-).

Signing off, time to visit a bar, which titles itself as "The best bar in the World", having won this award in 2009/10 by an international website which Awards this competition annually.