7 August 2009

Helsinki, Finland

We cruised overnight from St. Petersburg to Helsinki. These mobile hotel rooms are just great! We had breakfast in the “Lido” restaurant on deck 9 along with the rest of the thundering herd. If you are interested in a 90 minute breakfast in finest dining style, the Rembrandt Dining Room is a great option, but if you have an Excursion scheduled, the Lido conveyor belt feeding method is the best option. This is one of the great things about a cruise, you have tremendous choices of activity, style, people, and entertainment. No matter whether you spend $10000 on a Deluxe Verandah Suite or $1000 on a windowless inside micro-cabin, the public spaces and the food is the same for everyone. Since the excursions are an extra cost, if you stay on board, there are the pools, the gym, onboard activities, movies, TV, games, jigsaw puzzles, books, etc.
We checked in for our excursion in the Main Stage theater and were able to immediately leave the ship to get onto the bus. The ship uses as “personnel on board” system similar to those used on offshore oil and gas production platforms. They scan the bar code on your card and know that you have left the ship. This is the only way to keep track of 2000+ passengers who are going on 10 or 15 excursions in addition to those who are just wandering around in the town on their own. When it is time to leave, if your organized excursion is late arriving, the ship will wait for you. If you are on your own, the ship leaves and you get to find a way to get back to the ship. On a previous cruise, one couple missed the last ship’s tender trip and had to hire a local boat to chase down the cruise ship and to transfer while underway. It was probably quite exciting, but also a shock to the credit card. Better to be on time.
Helsinki is a relatively new city, with good support of bicycles and public transportation. We drove through the city center and headed north to to the village of Porvoo. Porvoo is a very old village with wooden buildings and narrow cobblestone streets. The area where we visited was quite small and is possibly organized more as a “trinket and toilet” stop rather than being of much historical significance. We are spoiled by our years in The Netherlands in that we are no longer impressed with 400 year old houses and narrow cobblestone streets. We boarded our bus again and headed to the Sipoo region of Finland, about another 20 minutes drive.
The farm of the Savijarvi family has been a working farm for four generations. The farm is operated by the extended family of about 20 family members including 3 generations of the family. They grow wheat, barley, oats, corn, and hay…but their main business is breeding horses.
We had lunch in the manor house, consisting of a nettle soup(!), a fish stew and a cake dessert with frozen berries with a hot caramel topping. Mmmm, good.
The tourist business is a summertime business only, and is a good way to supplement the income of the farm.
We then rode back to Helsinki and drove around the city a bit with two stops. One stop was at a church that was built by quarrying granite and building walls to construct a partially underground open space. The roof was then covered with a glass dome to provide light. We had about 15 minutes, including getting on and off the bus, so photos will be the main way we remember that stop. (OK, everybody off! Take pictures! Everybody on! We go. Isn’t Helsinki fun?)
The other stop was at another church square. The church building was impressive, but we could not go in as there was a wedding in progress. There was a brief rain shower to help us to learn who had umbrellas and who did not, and then we drove past some more statues and sights before returning to the Eurodam.
We skipped the formal dinner in the main dining room for the assembly line feed trough in the Lido. The food is just a good, but the presentation is a little different. After dinner, Pam went to the gym to work off the food she had just eaten and Jim tried to put some labels on the photos downloaded that day (and the day before). The casino was calling for us and so we were drawn to the “penny-slots” for an evening of spinning wheels, flashing lights, and the excitement of winning 2 cents by getting matching symbols on three of the 5 wheels on the slot machine. Wheee! Jim demonstrated how to turn $20 into $117 and then back to $31. Pam managed to provide entertainment for herself with $20 for about 2 hours.