Museum, Fortress, and Shopping!

Started off the day going to the free Helsinki City Museum which told one about the history of Helsinki from the stone age through both the Swedish and Russian rule to modern day independence. It was very interesting. I spent about 2 hours there just wondering around. They had a lot of good information in English.

Then wondered down a Street Museum (that marks the different time of Helsinki by what the streets would look like). And wondered around the market square around the ferry, and then was able to watch they ferry leave without another departure for another hour. So I went back to the hostel and dropped off the cool purchases.

Took the ferry to the Fortress called “Summolinia” or essentially Fortress of Finland. I wandered around the main street, which takes you from one side of the island to another. They have a cool Orthodox-converted-into-Lutheran-Church (which means when the Russians were here they made a Orthodox, but when the Finns took over they changed it into their faith Lutheran). I took a few self-portraits (which involved setting the camera on self-timer and running- which would have looked funny had I seen anyone else around me!) Then as I continued wandering, I encountered the main museum, which I went into. It had a lot of really good information on the history of the fortress. I also got to watch a video about the formation of the fortress both a professional one and a 6th graders video. The 6th graders was so cool: they had mad sheep and cut out puppets that made the sheep mad. (the sheep could save people and through them over from one island to the other).

When I left and continued wandering I found about 6 to 7 other people from our group, this was right after I had just thought “Man I thought a lot of people were coming over here, but I haven’t seen anyone from our group!” We continued to walk around what they termed the “Shire” (Lord of the Rings reference I believe). We then found a really relaxing place that we just sat at and looked over the sea for about 20 minutes.

After taking the ferry back, we went to Hesburger. The Finnish equivalent to Burger King (I say this instead of Micky D’s because their fries tasted better than MD and they had a VEGGIE BURGER!!!). It was really delicious. Then we went shopping at H&M, a cool store that exsists in some major cities in the US. I didn’t get anything.

Went back to drop off everyone’s purchases and then went out to the AussieBar. It was really cool inside with posters that said things like “These are my boys. Service brought to you by the descendants of criminals.” Or “Exiled for killing sheep. Service brought to you by the descendants of criminals.” We wanted to get a poster, but they weren’t for sale.