Helsinki

Helsinki was founded in 1550 by King Gustav Wasa (Sweden) to compete for the preferred port of the Baltic. Sweden owned Finland until 1809 when Alexander II (of St.Petersburg) took over Finland and made it part of the Russian empire. Remember that during the time of the Czars in Russia, the capital of Russia was St. Petersburg. Russia used St.Petersburg as a model for building Helsinki and because of that it gives it that sort of Russian feeling with its yellow and white buildings.

A large percentage of Finland’s population speaks Swedish. In fact almost every sign in Helsinki is in Finnish and Swedish (including street names). There is also a large component of Russian-speaking citizens as well. Finally in 1917, Finland won its independence.

Today was sort of an off day for us. We are still trying to recover from the whirlwind tours of St.Petersburg and so we didn’t feel like doing much. In our guidebook, Rick Steves only gives one site in Helsinki his three stars. So we shuttled into town and got our bearings, checked out a few of the free Internet sites (too busy), and headed off on foot to see the Church of the Rock.

The Church of the Rock was blasted out of a solid chunk of rock. Several of its walls are bare rock and you can see the original drilling marks. The church sits very low and from the outside doesn’t even look like a church—it’s just a pile of rocks. From the inside the ceiling is fashioned from a copper coil 13 miles long. When we arrived the church was closed for a wedding. Afterward, they parted the huge crowd (that had gathered to tour the church) to let out the wedding party and the bride and groom. Can you imagine having a wedding and when you leave there are hundreds of strangers there looking at you?

We did a little shopping, found an internet café where we paid five euros for one hour of Internet. (On the ship, we paid $100 for four and one half hours!) It was about time to return to the ship and so we took the shuttle back to the ship.

It's back to Stockholm tomorrow! Print this post