Last Day in Helsinki, 2/19/10

After another week in Helsinki, I leave for home tomorrow. We woke up to temperatures around -16C (3 F) this morning. We had a light snow almost continuously all day but the accumulation was still less than a couple of inches. The picture below is the hotel parking lot. As you can see, some of the cars haven't moved in a long time as there are several inches of snow on top of them. Where they have cleared the snow the piles of snow are well over six feet tall.

We have eaten really well while here, maybe too well. Wednesday night we went to a recreation park and rented skis for some cross-country skiing. I made it around their 1 km track about 4 times, although at an extremely slow pace.
After skiing we went out for dinner. Thursday night we went out for dinner again at a Russian restaurant in downtown Helsinki. The food was excellent and the restaurant was unlike any I have ever seen before. The inside was small rooms with beautiful art work on every wall of different scenes from Russia. I had Chicken Kiev. Several of the guys in our party went for "Ivan's Sword" which was literally a large sword/skewer with beef, lamb, and bacon on it. The presentation was every bit as impressive as the food tasted. I am will need to faste for two weeks after I get back to Texas.

Greetings from Helsinki, February 2010

I can now honestly say I have been to Finland in winter. I have never seen so much snow in my life (obviously not a skier). We spent our first day back in Helsinki enjoying the nice weather. It was -6C according to one temperature sign we passed (21 F). But it was sunny with no wind and the colder weather had dropped the humidity significantly from our last trip, so it felt comfortable. The sun appeared to be about 35 degrees above the horizon compared to about 20 degrees in December and the days are three hours longer now. I took a short walk around the hotel this morning including a short walk into the woods where I took this picture. You don't want to stray off this path in the snow. It has been packed down hard by all the people using it. The snow is unpacked on either side so if you step off the path you sink down a foot or more.

Tapani, Tom, and I took a bus into downtown Helsinki in the afternoon. The streets are clear but you see snow stacked in huge piles everywhere from the snow plows and shovels. The Esplanade looks completely different from our visit in December. We walked from here down to the harbor. It was frozen solid. Tapani told us that the harbor is still used during the winter, courtesy of icebreakers that come through on a regular basis.