We had been told by all of our Finnish and German hosts that we had to make sure to go to Suomenlinna, a sea fortress a ferry ride away from Helsinki. They said the kids would love it and that it is a great way to spend a day. They were right! Before we start though, here are a few more pictures of beautiful Helsinki; I took these on our walk to the ferry stop.
The ferry ride is only 15 minutes long …
but it was a little windy.
Here are a couple of pictures from the boat. It was a gorgeous day.
Once we got to the island, we went to the tourist information place and then started walking toward the Toy Museum as our first destination.
The Toy Museum was both cool and creepy. Let’s get the creepy out of the way first …
The stuff of nightmares, really. But there were some very cool displays, too. Moomins:
Robots:
And a giant bear:
After our Toy Museum visit, we walked around and visited other parts of the island.
We stopped to see a Finnish submarine they had on display.
Then we moved along. Finn did the navigating.
We spent a while checking out this cannon.
And hiding out in all the little spaces we found.
It was starting to get pretty cold and a bit rainy but we soldiered on. The boys had made up a very elaborate game that they were invading the island.
We took some pictures on the rocks.
Finally I convinced them that we should go (because I was freezing). We walked back to the ferry stop and took the quick ride back to Helsinki. When we got there we walked over to the Russian Orthodox cathedral.
There was a small crowd of people and it turned out they were playing the bells for a special occasion, something that was, apparently, very rare. We really lucked out!
For dinner we took the city tram to a restaurant for traditional Finnish food. The boys and I had meatballs while Bruce had reindeer. We’re pretty sure Santa Claus will not be bringing Bruce anything this year.