Finnish Fun!

Monday, June 21, 2010. We awoke for the longest day of the year and we certainly picked a good place for the celebration. Helsinki, Finland is a very vibrant Nordic city at the about the same latitude as St. Petersburg. So that means not very much darkness at this time of year... perhaps two hours of night from 2 to 4 am. (The St. Petersburg graduation celebration fireworks Saturday night were fired at 2 am!)

Our final day in St. Petersburg yesterday was quite fun, although it finally rained. (St Petes have a saying about the weather. "We have nine months of anticipation and three months of disappointment." We took an afternoon coach tour to two splendid palaces very near our ship--Vladimir and Yusupov Palaces. One was originally owned by royalty, the other by the wealthy Yusupov family and where Rasputin was murdered. Now they are both owned by the Russian government. They featured over-the-top gold gilt and huge ballrooms as big as basketball courts. The Yusupov Palace had this amazing performance space with box seats and room for 200 to watch a ballet or symphony performance. It was way cooler than any home theatre we've seen.

We had a fun sail-away party around the pool deck and marveled one more time at the spectacular St. Petersburg skyline.

At 8:30 this morning we docked at another superb city location... in a primo spot downtown just a block from the famous "Esplanade" boulevard of Helsinki. We strolled this clean and historic city finally landing for lunch at Kapelli Restaurant, which looked a bit like a Victorian version of Tavern on the Green. All windows and turrets, plus a typical Finnish menu. Tough choices... Filet of Reindeer, Wild Bear, or German Venison? I chose a dish that was labeled "Fried Game." Turned out to be deer meat and was quite delicious. The market stands adjacent to our ship have huge stalls with immense round fry surfaces filled with reindeer paella. Or reindeer sausage. Or reindeer burgers. You get the idea. In addition to their unusual protein choices, Finns also average 9 cups of coffee a day... tops in the world.

We're not in Finland long as we'll be "finnished" at 6 pm tonight... Helsinki is very cool with lots of English-speaking, friendly people.

Tonight's our third formal night, so it's back into the fancy duds for another overly-rich "gourmet" dinners. Tomorrow night we're opting for the "hot rocks" dinner around the pool... grilled meats, plain and simple.

Final port tomorrow: Stockholm. We've already cranked up our AABA tunes on our suite's music player.