Helsinki Boat Show

Sorry I did not post last week but there was nothing to post about. We did not go anywhere exciting or do anything interesting. We both had a lot of homework to work on so we spent our weekend doing that.

This weekend however, we had some free time so Randall wanted to go the boat show they had in Helsinki. It was different, we were not expecting all of the boats to be "cruising" style boats. They had very few fishing boats (3-4) and those were small (~21-22ft). The did have some large sail boats and a couple of yacht type boats but not many. They had a lot of electronics booths and several booths with just motors; in board and out board. There were several booths selling apparel and safety gear. We had a good time and were interested in the various types of boats that are popular in Finland but did not see the types of boats that we would be interested in at home.

Skiing in Porvoo

The "easy" slope

The teaching slope is on the left

The harder slope

The wooden houses

We went skiing yesterday and had a great time. Randall fell twice as much as I did because he insisted on going faster than he could control. He had problems learning how to stop. I went a lot slower and was able to stay upright longer. We got an instructor for over an hour and a half, which really helped. We realized though that we were the only adults that were taking lessons. The kids that were taking lessons were under 10! I am sure they laughed at us a lot. Our instructor however was very nice and patient with us; she helped us up continually and did not laugh every time we fell.

During the instruction we spent some time on the learning slope which was small and easy. After we mastered that slope we moved up to what they consider an easy slope. This slope if compared to US ski resorts is a medium difficulty slope. Randall fell several times but I managed to not fall at all. After the instruction was over we ate lunch and decided to call it quits because we were tired.

After leaving the ski place we walked around the town for a few minutes and looked at on old section of town. In Porvoo there are several wooden houses that date back to the 1500's, so we got some pictures of those while we were there. After that we caught a bus back to Helsinki where we relaxed for the rest of the evening.