Now it really doesn’t matter which city you visit immediately after St Petersburg, it is going to be an anticlimax and if you are going to have an anticlimax, Helsinki is probably a good place to do it.
A large portion of this city has been handed over to demented modern architects to do their thing and careful readers of this blog may have picked up that I am not a great fan of modern architecture so such sights as the world’s largest spherical building did little to quicken my pulse. It contained an indoor tennis stadium – can you think of a more inefficient and inappropriate shape for a tennis court?
Our first visit was to a park containing a memorial to the great Finnish composer Sibelius. This had been done by a modern sculptor. Now modern sculpture happens to be one thing I dislike more than modern architecture but Jeanette said I had to take a picture of it and stop grumbling so I did and here it is.
Next we went to the Church in the Rock. More modern architecture. I was starting to lose the will to live.
Still my spirits picked up a bit when we got to have a little walk around the streets.
What do you think of this for the front of their museum.
Fortunately we then went to the Senate Square which was in the old part of town which had been built during a period of Russian rule and had a real St Petersburg look about it.
We wandered around the streets here, visited a market and found an impressive looking Orthdox church. Interesting fact is that their Orthodox Churches here are Greek Orthodox rather than Russian. Finally we headed back to the ship.
Hardys’ Travels 