What we did

First of all, I have to mention that, as expected, the most exciting activity for the kids was swimming in the hotel swimming pool. Unfortunately for me, the water was a bone-chilling 73 degrees. That doesn't sound so bad if you're talking about sitting in a room, but in the water, it's plenty cold. The attendant at the pool told us that they kept the water that cold so that bacteria wouldn't breed. Apparently, chlorine is an unknown substance in Finland. We went swimming three of the four nights we were there.

Anyway, that aside, we got to see plenty of Helsinki and the surrounding area. On Thursday, we took a bus tour of the important sites in the city. This included a stop at the Sibelius monument, which is shown in a picture below. Sibelius was a Finnish composer and is pretty much Finland's national hero.

Later that day, Tanner and I checked out the reptile museum. That was really cool, with lots of snakes and other cuddly reptiles.

On Friday, we went to the Helsinki zoo, which is located on a nearby island. The kids had a great time. We also visited the Olympic stadium. Helsinki hosted the summer Olympics in 1952. We ate dinner at one of the exotic Finnish restaurants, as you can see. Some of their restaurants have cool-sounding names like "Subway," "McDonald's," and "Pizza Hut."

On Saturday, we went to a nearby island fortress called Suomenlinna. It was interesting to learn about how Finland basically kept trading hands between Sweden and Russia over the years until relatively recently. On the island, I found an exotic Finnish drink known as "Mountain Dew," which was quite exciting. After that, we wrapped up the day with a visit to Finland's national museum, which was just down the street from our hotel. Here's a picture of Tanner and Lindsey standing outside.

In closing, here are a couple of other cool pictures from Helsinki.

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