Helsinki

We docked into Helsinki at 7am this morning, and as we were only going to be here until after lunch we decided to pre-book a bicycle tour of the city so that we could see as much as possible in a short time. What a big mistake! It was forecast to rain which made me want to cancel, but Gavin said how bad can a bit of rain be? It turns out very bad - it was tipping down with rain after the first 15 minutes into our bike tour, and despite having a rain jacket my jeans got so wet I was soaked through to my underwear. The boys, as is typical of their age, don't wear rain jackets (not very cool, I am told) so they were prepared to get a bit wet but of course were soaked through too. 
When cycling one gets wetter than walking, and there was no respite from the rain and it was cold.

Not much that we could do about the weather, but it turned out to be a disaster all round. The bikes got the vote for having the most uncomfortable seats, the tour guide was pretty useless in that she hardly told us any information, and she took us on a tour around the lakes and parks of the city and we never saw any of the main city highlights that I wanted to see. When we finished the tour she had not noticed that some of the party were missing - namely my family - who had stopped way back due to problems with their bikes - Adam's pedal broke off and Luke's chain broke  - she never once did a headcount to check everyone was there. I was cycling near the front and could not look back so I had assumed they were at the back of the group. I knew they would find their own way back to the boat as it is a small city, which they did so all ended well.

Some facts I learned about Finland - it has a population of 5 million and there are 3 million saunas in the country. The population of Helsinki is half a million. Gavin has some Finnish clients and they have told him about the long winters which are linked to a high statistic of depression amongst its inhabitants, and also, or maybe consequently, alcoholism. We did see some homeless sharing bottles of booze at about 9am this morning, which we had not noticed in the other cities we visited. Their summers are wonderful with long days when the sun does not really set, there is only about 30 minutes of night during mid summer.

As a result of this unsuccessful bike tour in the pouring rain I did not get any photos. This is a photo I took from the deck of the boat when I got back - you can see Helsinki Cathedral dominating the skyline. This cathedral is modelled on St Isaacs church in St Petersburg. 

I have added some extras from yesterday - one of the boat being led by a tug down the River Neva as we left St Petersburg yesterday, with the 3 boys in the hot tub in the prow of the boat! Another one taken at about 11.30pm last night after dinner with the sunset which does not really set.