Trip Day 17 - arriving Helsinki

Disclaimer: We are already in Germany visiting family and I am very behind with writing the blogs. So much is happening every day that it gets more difficult to remember what happened. We feel so lucky though with everything. Even the weather is cooperating. So, here it goes...

Thursday August 24

Our great time here in Lapland is already coming to an end and we have to pack up again. Waking up to rainy windows though.

Can't resist though to take a photo of the "Happy Buddha" bottle. Of course there was also a Happy Buddha shampoo and shower gel.

Breakfast started at 8 am this day and we had plenty of time to go for a walk too. This was one of the two saunas we could have booked into. Cute.

These slim trees remind me so much of the plastic Christmas trees you can buy (starting around Halloween?). 

Who could not understand where these signs lead to?

The other sauna with hot tub.

The bus left the hotel at 11 am. The flight was at 12:55 

Got to stay hydrated.

James probably missed the lift-off as usually.

When we landed in Helsinki (about 3:25 pm) we had a gigantic downpour and were not sure how to get into the bus as dry as possible but it was figured out.

The GLO Hotel Art was cute and in a perfect location. We checked into our rooms and had agreed to meet to walk to a pizza place. 

The formerly called "Pizza Berlusconi" was now called just "Pizza Reindeer" because Berlusconi had died. James and I ordered the small one to share. The menu had listed "reindeer dust" as one of the ingredients and we wondered what that might be. We made fun that may be our noses were going to glow red.

James and I, Betty, Marc, Karen and Tom didn't feel like going back to the hotel right away and started to walk towards Esplanade. So much to see on the way though. This little park had a statue which I could look up since we have T-Mobile now.

Soon we heard music. There was a large park on the other side of the street and there were mostly young people everywhere. Several groups were singing a-capella. 

It was so much fun.

We also saw several groups of young people with funny pants. One group all red pants, or yellow, or green.

We asked them and were told they were students. It seemed that the different groups were basically different study felds. The first ones were mostly nurses and so on.

Of course we also enjoyed the greenery, flowers in planters, fancy architecture and statues.

Marc's goal was the Helsinki Bryggeri, a brewery.

Past the entry was a courtyard type area with lots of tables. A male choir was again singing a cappella and it was just so very enjoyable.

Marc asked me whether I had taken a photo of this! We were sitting right next to it.

And with the walk back to the hotel I managed 12,977 steps this day. Not bad. And this Helsinki surprised us. Tonight it seemed such a happy place. Looking forward to tomorrow.