Downtown Helsinki

Cruise line possibly going to Sweden Some of the buildings near the port

One of the Churches near the port

Some of the houses on the other side of the port

Another cruise line in the port

A fountain in front of the port

One of the statues downtown

Another statue downtown

Saturday we went downtown to check out some of the sites that we saw last weekend when we went out to eat. We got off the bus and walked toward an area that will soon become the Christmas market. The area that will actually hold all of the booths and tents is a grassy area with lots of benches and lined with trees. There is a large statue in the area as seen from the above picture. Across from this area are several high end shops including, Lauren Ashley, Luis Vuitton, and many that I do not know or cannot pronounce. All of them looked very high end and we did not even bother going into any of the shops.
After we walked down that street we turned down a side street toward the port. There we saw several cruise lines that do short (2-3 hour) and longer (full day) cruises to Estonia and Sweden.

We also walked through two outside markets selling anything from jewelery and animal pelts to baked goods, fried and fresh fish and fresh produce. We will return to these markets and purchase some of the sweets from the baked goods tents and possibly some of the fresh produce. The fish were disappointing; all they had were small sardine size fish fried or whole (scales, guts, and all) fresh fish. We may eventually purchase some fish from either the market or the Prisma but that will not be any time soon as we still need to figure out what kind of fish they have.

After we walked around downtown we headed to the bus stop. Along the way we saw the Ford Mustang above and had to get a picture. It is the only American sports car we have seen the whole time.
After we came home and ate lunch we went to the largest mall in Scandinavia! It was a little disappointing. The mall was bout the size of Crabtree in Raleigh or two Colonial Malls put together. We decided the malls here are so small because there is nearly one on every other block. They had a lot of restaurants and more high end stores. This is a very metropolitan city so some of the people here must make plenty of money and can afford the items. We will probably go back to the mall for the restaurants and some of the chocolates! Otherwise we will only return with guests and for something to do.