Day 11: Helesinki

We got up and were very tired. We went down to the breakfast buffet, which wasn't as good as the evening one. I was kind of surprised they had american bacon, I was expecting ham. We watched the ship come into port. It was about 11 when we go off the ship. We went straight to our new hostel. They weren't quite ready for us so we dropped our bags and set off to look at the city. 

Our first stop was the Orthodox Church. It was a read building with a green dome. It was ornately decorated inside and worth gawking over. Our next stop was a very stark contrast to the orthodox church. It was the Lutheran cathedral. It was white with very little decoration. It had all of five statues, which is a minuscule number in cathedrals. To get to the cathedral, we climbed a bunch of stairs which are one of the main meeting places in Helsinki. 

We went down to the market square, which is by the harbor. It has stalls that sell fruit and veggies, souvenirs, and fresh food stands. Being next to the harbor these places serve tons of fresh fish. I wasn't hungry really, so I went and got some raspberries. The raspberries were unlike I'd ever seen before, they were golden. Everybody else had fish plates or salmon soup. 

After lunch, we went to the free Helsinki City museum. It was a cool little museum. There was this old video of a dunk tank and you could through a ball and trigger the drop. Pretty much everything was in english. There was a movie theater in the basement showing free movies about Helsinki. Every single one of us fell asleep at one point "watching" the movies. 

Once we had all woken up, we went to another church. This one was blasted out of the rock. It was incredible and they had really cool music playing.  Mom and Dad both bought rosaries. We stopped for coffee at a little shop because we had time to kill before the museum had free admission.  Then we headed toward the National Museum.  When we got there, the times had changed and they were closing. 

So we caught the tram back to the hostel. We sat in the restaurant at the hostel and had drinks and talked. We passed around some fries and onion rings. We also shared a pizza with a funny name: Rudolph the red-nose. It was a reindeer pizza with pickles, onions, bacon, and of course, reindeer. We hung out then hit the hay.