explore Helsinki, Senate Square, Cathedral and market square

During our morning bus city tour, we visited several different areas of Helsinki, stopped at the Senate Square with the green domed Helsinki Cathedral atop the steps from the square. I remembered a picture of this cathedral and steps on an album cover of the Leningrad Cowboys. The Olympic stadium which was built for the Olympics in early 1900's and its statue of Paavo Nurmi who won 9 golds in 3 Olympics in long distance running events. And the park where a memorial for the composer Jean Sibelius stood. It was a very interesting looking, abstract steel structure made of many textured tubes, and a face likeness of him on a wall nearby. There were a lot of tourists there though.

Noticeably many from mainland China! Apparently Finair has direct flights from Beijing and it's very convenient for them to come to Finland. Our last stop was the stone church which is a round church dug into the natural stones, with rock walls and a huge copper roof. It has good acoustics and often host concerts in addition to being a church. While we were there, there was a pianist playing the piano.

We returned to the hotel at the conclusion of the city tour, and wandered out to find lunch. We ended not far from the hotel at the cafe called Michelle's, my simple duck salad was pretty good. Then we walked a few blocks more to the train station, which has a very attractive architecture. On both sides of the front entrance, were two statues of nordic kings holding round globes (huge functioning light bulbs), they reminded me of the statues in the river in the Lord of the Rings movie.

We walked inside the train station and onto the platforms, where you could catch trains to St Petersburg and elsewhere. Outside the train station was a central bus station with lots of busses coming and going. The national theatre stood at one of the square, it had a nice facade with carvings of owls.

We made our way east and got to the Uspenski Orthodox Cathedral near the harbor. Well, the cathedral was not exactly as I remembered, several of its gold tops were missing and presumby being cleaned. And I thought there were no buildings near the cathedral but there was this big building nearby, which looked like it must have been there for more than 10 years. It may just be my imagination or the angle of the photo taken the last time. We went inside the cathedral and looked at its Russian icons. The inside dome was painted very beautifully, and there were saints or guardians wearing helmets and white beards.

Kevin said one of them looked a lot like Gandalf, and was probably the inspiration to his looks in movies and legends we know about today.

We walked back through the market square, and the esplanade park where people were listening to a free concert of jazz music, sitting on benches  or lying on grass sunning themselves, generally having a good time on a weekday afternoon, so they were probably mostly tourists or locals on vacation, July being the month for vacation for many Finns.

Dinner was at the Fishmarket restaurant, interesting decor, it's below street level, and their seafood was supposed to be the finest in Helsinki. I was not disappointed with my grilled tuna, the presentation of the dishes were very beautiful.