Helsinki, Finland 2009

Our port time was supposed to be 6-6, but was changed to 7 to 4:30. My biggest disappointment of the trip was HAL canceling our Lapland tour here. My first indication was when there were no tickets in the cabin when we boarded. I glanced at the shore excursion booklet and it was not listed. At dinner that first night our tablemates said it had been canceled due to lack of interest. There were at least 4 of us paying $1600 per couple that wanted to go. Ah well. I don't usually book ship tours, but this one included a private flight that HAL set up and the timing with the regular plane schedules would not have worked for our timeframe. They had shortened this port so much we wouldn’t have been time to do it anyway. So, I had a basic “plan B” here and thanks to Mike who gave us his notes on the port we decided to see the sites via the tram system.

In hindsight since we had not really planned this port we should have grabbed the HOHO that tried very hard to entice us at the port. We spent quite a bit of time at Stockmanns Department store after walking into town from the ship and we found a couple of nice local TI people that told us where to buy our transportation cards. The first trams were jam packed and lots of loud crying children. Not a lovely experience. Plus, none of the stops matched to the literature we had and we were quite frustrated. We toured Senate Square and saw the churches/cathedrals. We had some lunch at Stockmanns and bought some nice blown glass birds at Stockmanns. The Rock Church was interesting. Still a great day.....