28 August

After visiting the museum and the cathedral, which included a rather gorgeous embroidered bible, Terry headed back to the hotel for a nap, and I went on to have a brief peek at rather boringly named "handicrafts museum" - sadly I arrived 15 minutes before it closed so just ran through and discovered that what it actually is is a sort of living history in 18th century wooden buildings, with all sorts of interesting stuff going on - definitely worth going back to visit next time I happen to be in Finland.. <grin>

(Ooh, I forgot to mention that I struck a silver coin at the Aboa Vetus museum too... here is me in action)

I headed back to the hotel, and met up with Terry. I had passed by a cafe that I thought would really appeal to him (how can you go past beer and comics), and true enough he settled himself down while I went for a swim at the hotel.

Then it was out to dinner at Harolds Viking restaurant - what fun! More details and photos on my foodblog.

The next morning I woke up early... well not so much woke up as got out of bed after a sleepless night. My rls was misbehaving, and this was topped by suffering an asthma attack - I had lost my ventolin back in Helsinki, and I was feeling somewhat... distressed. So at 7am I went off in search of a bus to the hospital. There they reinflated me and I headed back to the hotel and crawled back into bed for a short nap.

We had these grand plans to go to the handicrafts museum as well as Turku castle, but as it was, we had to race from the castle to the train in order to get back to Helsinki in time for our flights!

Here are a few tidbits of why I spent so many hours there...

Dice	Game of marbles anyone?	buttons and their source
lovely grinning jug	very sturdy table	medieval graffiti
one of the halls	some charming spoons	a lovely knife and spoon set (16th C)
more spoons	medieval shoe	belt and ring

and with a pleasant train trip and a last kiss to Aida (who met us at Helsinki train station) the holiday was over.

27 August

A brief trip to Finland for my friend Aida's wedding.

I arrived on Wednesday afternoon and headed to the hostel, and then off to the Siilky centre: a shop specialising in silk clothes. It was on my list of things I had to do in Helsinki, and my visit paid off with a purple silk jacket, maroon silk and cotton top, and linen/viscose trousers and skirt.

The next day I caught a ferry to Tallinn, Estonia. I was staying in a rather fun hostel called "Euphoria" which appears to be owned and run by modern day hippies. When I got into my room, I met my two room mates who broke the news that the night before there had been music and drumming until 6.30am. This did not bode well for the night!

My first stop, however, was the Museum of Estonian Life. This is not a very big museum, but has some funky coins and bits and pieces.

I wandered over to the other side of town to the Russian markets in the vague thought that I would buy ingredients and cook, but then decided that a) I couldn't find the ingredients I wanted (all you can find in Russian markets is potatoes, cabbage, onions... and I was not in the mood for cooking Russian) and b) I was in Estonia for only one night, I should eat Estonian!

I also went to the local sauna in the hope that they would have a bath to ease my aching legs. But no joy: only cold baths (post sauna plunges) on offer. I have decided that this is the major minus of hostels - no baths.

My Estonian meal ended up being a pancake stuffed with smoked chicken and goat cheese - not sure how authentic that is, but it was good.

The next day I went to the tower, with the intention of doing the under the city tour, but sadly that was not starting till the afternoon. Still, the tower was pretty cool and had a nice view over Tallinn too.

I returned to the same pancake restaurant for lunch, and while there, had a phone call from my travel friend Terry. He had arrived in Helsinki, much to my surprise as I thought he was not arriving until the evening. So here am I in another country, with a three hour ferry trip to get to Helsinki, and the hotel is booked in my name, so he can't even dump his bags. Ooops. My bad. I got myself to the ferry terminal and discovered that I missed the boat by 5 minutes. Next boat isn't for another hour and its the slow boat that takes four hours. Oh dear. That will make for a very grumpy Terry. In the end I walked to the heliport and yep, I actually booked a ticket. My first ever helicopter trip - for 129 euros.

So my mum recently went on the back of a motorbike, and I went on a helicopter ride... it is obviously the year for trying different forms of transport! Maybe next for me is a balloon ride - something I have always wanted to do... or maybe this is the year for me to try hang gliding. Once I arrived back in Helsinki, I met up with Terry and we went over to visit Aida. It was great to have the chance for Terry to meet Aida - its always a bit strange to go to the wedding of someone you don't know. There was a music festival going on in Helsinki, so we headed out to see what was going on. One of the cool things that they had at the festival was a tent set up full of fabrics and old clothes, and some sewing machines so people could make their own costumes. There were all sorts of performances in the street, and I got to strike my own coin!.

Then we went off to a bar called Mandala where we saw a fantastic band. Terry headed off early to bed and Aida and I stayed and danced.

In the morning, we met with Aida on the train platform and headed up to Tampere. I figured as a witness for the wedding, it was one of my duties to ensure that the bride got there, and didn't run off with a case of cold feet. The train trip was peaceful, with a bit of seat rearrangement, and a lovely chat with a totally delightful lady called Rita. Terry went off to sleep in another compartment, and Aida and Rita and I chortled and giggled our way to Tampere.

Once settled in to our hotel, Terry crashed out, and I wandered the streets of Tampere for a while. Before I knew it, it was time to get ready for the wedding. I put on my lovely new skirt (courtesy of the cool silk shop in Helsinki) and my impossibly high heels and met up with Aida and Harri. A shot of rather frightful booze in the car, and then it was time to help Aida get dressed in her kimino.

It was interesting to see how a Finnish wedding goes.

I am not sure whether the bride and groom arriving at the wedding is traditional or not, but that is what happened. After the wedding, a group of girls kidnapped the bridge and dragged her off, much to Aida's shock. Harri (photo above when he got the news about the kidnapping) had to perform all sorts of tricks to win Aida back. Beyond that, it was much like any other wedding, just with more alcohol!

Terry and I decided to stay in Tampere an extra night, so had a leisurely day to wander about. In fact we didn't do much at all, but did drop in to the shoe museum (which sadly had only one medieval shoe) and the moomin museum. The moomin museum was actually really cool: I was blown away by the artistic skill of Tove Jansson: I really hadn't realised just how amazing an artist she was.

We headed up to the Tampere tower "Nasinneula" for a really delicious dinner. No photos, which is a huge pity, as both the view from the tower and the food were great. On the whole, revolving restaurants are not the best places to eat because the food usually suffers from laziness as the owners rely on the view to earn the bucks, but I am pleased to say that Nasinneula is not one of them. Details of the menu are on my foodblog.

The next day we took the train again, this time to Turku. We knew that there was a castle to visit at Turku, but didn't know much more about the place. We settled ourselves into our room, in a mostly-finished hotel - really quite a good deal: the hotel reception and breakfast and facilities were in the 4 star hotel across the road, and in return for the effort of having to walk across the road and staying in brand new 3 star rooms, we saved 44 euro. Seems good to me.

We headed to the Turku Aboa Vetus & Ars Nova museum. There was a fascinating exhibition of peruvian silver, and a great archeological exhibition of old Turku. You know, I hadn't realised that jews harps as an instrument are really very ancient - I mean, its just not something I had thought about.

14 August

Well three people emailed me to say that they look at my webpage, so my guess was accurate!

What have I been up to? Fete de Geneve pretty much... one week of being out every night until between 3 and 6am and by the end of the week I was shattered. Lots of fun.

The fireworks:

My friends at Chez Claudio:

Its all plans at the moment, getting ready for heading off to Finland next week.