I arrived at the hotel and had a wonderful buffet breakfast with breads, meat, cheese, salmon, and fruit. As we watched them close down the tables, we plotted out parts of the day. The three of us ventured out into the sun-shining cold ready for a bus tour of the city. It was interesting to me that the 90 minute tour was on a tape which was meant to be timed with the travel of the bus. The same company which developed the movie at Suomalinna prepared the devices which had the same information given in eight different languages. I found it particularly interesting that a language choice was Latin which I did not think was spoken by anyone outside very traditional Catholic services.
We made one stop on the tour at the Sibalius monument - the sunlight around noon made it glisten beautifully.
...Sibalius's head in metal
After the tour we went to the Esplande Cafe where I had a large and lovely salad with chicken and mozzarella - a little more food than I wanted or needed but the flavors were fantastic. Next we found the number 10 tram and took it up to the National Museum of Finland. The most interesting part for my father was learning about people migrating to Finland and somehow managing to survive not only the first winter here but staying for many more. We seemed to agree that they must have come in the summer when it is lovely here because no person would bring their families somewhere new when it was -20 degrees Celsius.
After that museum we walked down the main street in Helsinki and found our way to the Kiasma (contemporary art museum). All of the exhibits were closed because they were setting up for the next series so we hopped on tram 10 and got off at the site of my studio design project. Across the street from there sits the Helsinki Design Museum where we went and checked out a lot of famous chairs, dishes, and a very large batch of Merrimekko fabrics and clothes. It was really interesting to see how the style of the company has evolved over the years and to know that my favorite design of theirs was something brought back from the 1960s. In order to wrap up our Helsinki museum day we went to the architecture museum nearby. The best part of that exhibit for me was seeing images and reading explanations for a couple buildings currently being erected in Helsinki. When the museum closed we headed to my apartment by way of St. John's Cathedral. We sat and chatted about my semester here, the possible trip to Disney in June, summer internship applications, and the Disney Imagineering Design Competition, and more topics I don't even remember. Before we knew it our reservation time was approaching so we walked back towards the city center to go to Juuri for dinner.
Our plan was to get tapas (they call them sapas here b/c they think it sounds more Finnish) but everything on the menu looked so fun that we got about eight sapas and then asked to split a main dish of pike perch. Juuri is very proud to serve food grown and raised in Finland and then prepared in a modern/contemporary fashion. After all that we still were so tempted by the dessert menu that the three of us split two things - I unfortunately do not remember exactly what they were but there was a chocolate lava cake, something with almonds, and either sorbet or ice cream. Everything was delicious (aside from the liver sapa and the purple pike perch but that was the beauty of each of us having a different favorite dish). We found out when the bill came that each of us had eaten a full serving of that main dish which explains we were so full but still soo happy about the meal. They went back to the hotel while I walked in the opposite direction back to my apartment for a few quick phone call/video chats and bed.
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