Fabulous Finland
What we did with our short time in Helsinki

EHG flew from the US; I flew from London Heathrow.  We met at Helsinki's airport and started our week of Scandinavian adventures!
I arrived after 5 pm.  We took the bus from the airport to the train station.

We stayed at the Holiday Inn Helsinki City Centre next to the train station. Our room was €68 with no breakfast.		It was a nice room.
Neither of us speaks or reads Finnish, so we were lost in the grocery store.  We ended up getting multigrain bread (yum), chips, Philadelphia cream cheese, and Fanta pop!
No tub (just a shower, but roomy)		Another shot of the bathroom
		Connection with my previous week: EHG wore her Stonehenge socks in Helsinki! (They were the souvenir I bought her from England.)
Helsinki's harbor is very picturesque. (Since our return, we've enjoyed viewing it daily on the webcam.)
The Old Market Hall is right on the harbor. It looks like a historic market hall anywhere in Europe!		It was crowded inside, so we didn't stay long.
		Food is expensive in Finland. We bought lunch at this lunchstand near the harbor.
Here's my €10 lunch: grilled salmon, home fries, a small salad (with yogurt and pickle dressing), a rice-vegetable medley, a slide of bread, and a bottle of water.		EHG's lunch was the same, but she got chicken instead of the salmon.
Helsinki has two beautiful churches near its harbor.  The white one is the Lutheran Cathedral . . .		. . . and the red one is the Uspenski (Orthodox) Cathedral.
The most memorable thing we did in Helskinki was see the sculptures on the Esplanade that we nicknamed "The Girls."
They were actually part of Manolo Valdés's work called Las Meninas, based on Velasquez's painting Las Meninas (which is in the Prado in Madrid). They are among the niftiest public art I've every experienced. After seeing them in Helsinki in July 2007, I've run into them again twice: in Monte Carlo (in December 2008) and at Chenonceau in France (in June 2009). Both times were a surprise and made me laugh and smile.  How wonderful! I've also now had the privilege of seeing Valdés's inspiration, the original by Velasquez, at the Prado twice: in February 2009 and again in February 2011.
We also took tram 3T for a self-guided tour.  The highlight was going by Olympic Stadium!		We walked up to Helsinki's rock church (Temppeliaukio) but didn't attend a service.
		On the back from the Temppeliaukio churchm we saw this cool public sculputure! (Note that it rained quite a bit while we were out walking.)