Finland

We had a blast in Helsinki! The first day we took a ferry out to Suomenlinna Fortress, Helsinki's harbor island. It had some museums and a lot of military history. Our favorite part though, was getting out there! The bay was covered in ice. I was wondering how a little ferry boat was going to get across, but we just plowed right through, breaking up ice bergs along the way. It was really fun!
There were also a few cruise ships docked.

Lynne, Mark and I on the ferry

Here comes our ferry!

I think it's been a while since these bikes have been ridden.

Emily's eying the reindeer pelts. Sorry, Emily. They cost about $100 each!

downtown street

The next day, we had a private tour guide take us around Helsinki in a giant van to see all the sites. Here's what we saw:

Parliment building

Uspenski Cathederal--gorgeous!!

The interior was just beautiful. The hardest part of all the churches we visited, was trying to stop the boys from blowing out all the prayer candles and not playing with the candles/flames. But boys will be boys!

Church of the Rock--officially called Temppeliaukio Church, was actually built into the rock and had natural light coming in from the roof. This was my favorite place in Helsinki. This is the church alter, seen from the balcony.

From the outside you can see the copper dome roof.

It had great acoustics!!

Sibelius Monument: Stainless steel sculpture tribute to Finland's greatest composer.

The Olympic Stadium, built for the 1940 Olympics, and used again in the 1952 Olympics. Paavo Nurmi was a Finnish runner who got 12 Olympic medals.

All of us standing on Senate Square, with the Lutheran Cathedral in the back

And of course, the kids had a blast with all the snow. We were also glad Helsinki was a little warmer than Estonia.

and not pictured, but also really interesting, was the National Museum of Finland, where the most exciting part was when Jake walked into a display room and set off the alarm! It had a lot of fun folk costumes and info on the czars, thrones, etc.