Seeing the Sights: Helsinki

So... March 7th (about a week ago), we trekked to Helsinki. We were on the first train out of Tartu to Tallinn, and hopped on the ferry to Finland for 7.5 hours. By the time the ferry left we'd already been together for 4ish hours, after having broken up the part the night before 5 hours before that. I even taught Agnese some ASL on the train, while Yulia & Tobi had their linguist discussion. (Which she used to threaten Tobi.)

Goodbye, Tallinn!

The first place we went, after winding through the various roads to get out of dock district, was a playground. Because, of course.

Mom & Dad 

That's right. Tobi's in the picture.

We continued to wander the streets of Helsinki via Tobi Tours. We found the information centre. We came upon the Helsinki Cathedral. We went to Tobi's favourite bookstore (which was closed). Checking out the map we found a few other spots, and the Hard Rock Cafe. Checked another one off the list! Closer and closer to finishing that bucket list. I have several shots of me and the HRC Helsinki shirts, but the glare in the window makes them impossible to see... The proof exists, however!

Tobi took us to a Nepalese restaurant for lunch that was the best decision we made all day, despite the tiny tables and chairs. The table had an intricately carved dragon on it, which was only visible for the short time between our ordering and the table being completely covered in a variety of dishes, cups, and baskets. 

Soooooo gooood. All right, so I'm still not sure how I feel about the banana lassi... that had something weird in it. Turns out, sweetener comes in a chapstick-ish sized dispenser here, and in tiny little tablets. Oh, and it tastes awful. Truly awful. I'd never seen one of these sweeter machine-things, and I'm glad I've never tried to put that in my tea. It was so bad!

Our demolished table settings.

 We headed to the store to stock up on some Finnish things, grabbing some licorice (just no, everyone. No. Just. No.) and sandwiches, etc. Tobi reminded us we'd officially crossed back over into "Welcome to Western Europe." The store reminded me how much I miss cakes & pies I can just pull out of the freezer, prepackaged donuts, other things I can't think of at the moment. It was much more like being in an American grocery stores than the ones here. The little things... And! We found some crackers (?) of the Finnish Bob the Builder: Puuha Pete!

Here's "security" at the ferry terminal. It seems they do random checks, so not everyone goes through security. Currently, behind those doors is Tobi. Apparently, he's a shady type of guy. While it might have appeared to the onlookers that we were mocking him, we were worried he wouldn't be allowed back into Estonia. Somewhere deep down. 

In addition to these photos, I found a series of videos accidentally taken of the inside of my pocket... one of which is 16 minutes long. So, there's that. On the ferry back we all agreed that this was a fantastic and hilarious trip; we spent so much time laughing (Agnese most of all), unfortunately, we were all so tired that we don't remember 90% of what was so funny. 

We'd had a conversation earlier about how Europeans don't know US geography, and visa versa. So, Tobi took a US states quiz test and got a 73% (Kudos! I think the statistics said Europeans usually get around a 30%). I've still got to find and take an European quiz.

This post doesn't make it look like we did much, but apparently I didn't take many photos. True, we were only there for 7ish hours, but we definitely did more than shown. I'm sure I'll end up sticking 

things in as I think of them. But! The highlight quotes from the trip:

"Ich bin eaten by a dragon." -Sorcha's attempt at German

"I'd like to tickle a hedgehog." -Tobi (based on the discussion the night before about how the German word pronounced "eagle" means "hedgehog")

And now for the Embassies & Consulates:

Thailand

Italy