Photos.: Finland

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Finland

So I've gotten around to sorting out some of my pictures from our trip to Finland. I know some of you have been asking when I'm going to post stuff, so here we go.
For those who don't know, we went to Helsinki for 5 days at the end of April to visit Susan, who has been doing an internship/exchange thing there.
We spent a few days just wandering around Helsinki. Here are some examples of fairly typical streets:

Downtown Helsinki looks fairly uniform, as a lot of it was built around the same time and in similar styles (1800's-ish I think, but I'm not good at dates so don't kill me if I'm wrong).

We visited some of the major tourist spots like the markets, and shopping streets. Also senate square, which my tourist literature tells me is surrounded by neo-classical architecture.

The main attraction at senate square is the Lutheran Cathedral that was designed by Carl Ludvig Engel (definitely in the 1800's this time).

There is also a spot in the square where there used to be a church, and where in the winter they build a replica out of snow. They hold services and apparently lots of weddings there.

We also went to see one of Helsinki's other famous churches, the Temppeliaukio. It was carved out of bedrock and is supposed to have great acoustics. Outside:

Inside:

While we were wandering the city, we came across this boat.

Not exactly an awe-inspiring, majestic, or meaningful logo, is it?

At my request (surprise) we took an afternoon to see the Helsinki zoo. It's on a rocky island not too far from the city centre. It was small-ish and obviously also limited in what animals it could keep by the Finnish climate. They have one major indoor pavilion for some tropical things, and lots of deer and other ungulates and animals outside that could handle the cold and the rocky terrain. I thought they had made pretty good use of the space they had to work with. Anyway, pictures. Apparantly my camera brain was not switched on that day, as I didn't end up with very many decent photos, but here are a few that turned out ok.

This bison was throwing its branch around with its horns. The bars of the enclosure were more than widely spaced enough for the branch to fit between them. It seemed like the bison was trying to throw the branch at us.

A fallow deer. Translate fallow as "small".

A pygmy mongoose. Translate pygmy mongoose as "ooh, it's small, cute, and fuzzy and it's making little squeaking noises".

A gray seal. Fat and sleepy. This was the only time it even lifted its head.

A Hoffman's sloth. Posted simply because I like sloths.

The other major tourist attraction we visited in Helsinki was the Linnanmaki Amusement park. We happened to go on the day it opened for the season.

The next people to ride the wooden rollercoaster on the left of this picture after us got stuck halfway up a hill and had to be pushed to get going again.

The last thing we did was to take a day trip on a ferry to Tallinn, Estonia. Tallinn has an old town which is very tourist-oriented, but very pretty. Consulting the tourist-literature again tells me that most of the buildings in the old town date from the 11th to 15th centuries. Most of them now contain restaurants, bars, bakeries, or souvenir shops.
The buildings of Tallinn:

Tallinn also has famous churches. The Niguliste (St. Nicholas') church - 13th century:

The Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, built in the late 19th century by tsarist Russians:

The rooftops of old Tallinn:

And a roof detail with the modern city in the background:

Despite the superabundance of tourists, the old city was beautiful and well worth a visit. The stores sell some really nice amber, linen and wooden crafts. You can also buy some great cider; apple, pear, or other fruits. This is also true in Finland, where I tried a very tasty blueberry cider. Mmmm, drinks.