Our European Vacation

I'm going back in time to repost blogs from my past. 

This one appeared four years ago today.

Part I: Helsinki, Finland

On June 1st we left the USA for Europe.  First stop - Helsinki, Finland.  My sister in law is from there and she and my brother arrived several days before us to stay in a Flip Key rental apartment.  We joined them on the morning of the 2nd after arriving by Icelandair.  To make sure we adjusted to the time change we set off to see the city right away.

Here are some highlights from the first day.

Starting off on our walk.  My sister in law in the brown, her brother and sister in law in front of her, my brother looking back at me, and my husband, Dan in the striped shirt.

The apartment we rented is in that yellow building on the second floor overlooking the street.

Access to the apartment was by this circular stairs or this elevator.  Dan loved using it.

Walking to the downtown was very easy from the apartment.  We walked past this park every time which commemorated the deaths of victims of the plague.

The city is a mix of old and new.

This window display of succulents and cacti was really striking.

The promenade was in the heart of the city and always filled with people.  We brought warm weather and being so far north days were very long.

The birds fought over this perch on top of this statue.

Never seen this sort of store in the states.

More to come.  Stop by again.

Random Windows in Helsinki

From our vacation last year to Europe here are some random photos of windows and their embellishments I found interesting.

A market place

Top of a building

A storefront window

Inside a church

Inside another church

Above a door

European Vacation - Part VI

This is the last post from Helsinki, Finland.  On Sunday night June 5th we flew to Budapest to board the AmaWaterways River Cruise on the 6th.  Budapest will be featured in the next posts to come.

I shared this earlier, but again the apartment my brother rented through FlipKey was on the second floor of that yellow building down the block.

Looking out the window across the street were shops on the ground floor and other apartments above.

Inside the walls were covered with art work.

Dan taking a nap in one of the bedrooms.

My brother, Steve in the living room.

My sister- in-law in the kitchen.

The library/study.

The bathroom with a strange shaped tub and no shower curtain.  We managed.  There was a washer there too.

At the waterfront  there were lots of produce stands and seafood stands.

This woman sold fish from her boat.

A ghost sign in English, though everyone seemed to understand English.

In the enclosed market lots of items for sale,

This was lunch.  It was like egg salad.

Back at the apartment with its ancient elevator.

The ceiling in the National Museum

A street musician.

Lunch on Suomenlinna.

Dan had a beef dish.

I had asparagus risotto.

We really enjoyed our visit to Helsinki, Finland.  What a friendly and easily accessible city it was.

European Vacation - Part V

Suomenlinna - The Sea Fortress - Finland

Suomenlinna is only accessible by water so we took the ferry across - a 15 to 20 minute trip.

There were lots of schoolchildren aboard too.

The church steeple with light house on top is the first visible landmark of this sea fortress.

My sister in law lived on this island when her father was stationed there.  Here she is at the door of the apartment building where they resided.

Here's the interior door on the second floor.

And the back windows she would have looked out of all those years ago.

From the information pamphlet: "Founded in 1748 on a cluster of islands off the coast of Helsinki, the Suomenlinna sea fortress is a cultural treasure.  Its construction began in the 18th century, when Finland was still part of the Kingdom of Sweden."

A cruise ship passing by.

"Suomenlinna is an irregular bastion fortress constructed on uneven terrain and on separate islands."

Here are two maps in the visitor center that give you a scale of the fortress.

Tomb of Augustin Ehrensvard, who led construction.

"Suomenlinna was added to the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites in 1991, to be preserved for future generations as a unique example of the military architecture of its era."

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