Helsinki, Finland

            Wednesday, 15 May 2013 – Since we weren’t scheduled to meet for our excursion until 12:15 PM, we didn’t need to set an alarm clock.  Sally still woke up around 4:45 but Jesse slept until 10:00 AM.   We ate a late breakfast, where we ran into Susan and Chris (of Scotland) and talked for several minutes.  Afterward, we sat around the cabin until almost noon; then we proceeded to our excursion meeting point.  We were scheduled for the From Helsinki to Porvoo through the Finnish Countryside tour.  When we arrived, we were very surprised to learn that our excursion had left 45 minutes earlier!  Yes, there was a notice in the Costa Cruise publication, Today, that we needed to set our clocks one hour forward.  The cruise staff was very accommodating and booked us on a similar excursion, Tour of Helsinki, which was scheduled to leave at 1:15 PM.  They gave us credit for the previous excursion and only charged us an additional 2 Euros each (the cost difference), for the later excursion.  Thanks Costa!



Helsinki Senate Square

Sibelius Monument

            Our tour bus drove around the harbor and city, as the tour guide, Anna, described the significant sights in English and in Italian (with a heavy accent in both), for appropriate passengers on board.  We stopped at the Senate Square, where we toured the Cathedral, and later at the Temppeliaukio Church, a modern masterpiece built into a hill of rock and known by locals as the “Rock Church.”  We also made a brief photo stop at the Sibelius Monument, constructed of hundreds of steel tubes that “sing with Sibelius’ works” to honor their greatest composer.  We returned to the ship at 5:15 PM.

            Jorg (pronounced York – we’ve been misspelling his name) and Gabi joined us again for dinner, where we had more interesting conversation.  Afterward, we went to Grand Bar Rhapsody for dancing and were later joined by Jorg and Gabi.  We danced only a few dances and returned to our cabin for the night.  We will dock at St Petersburg, Russia, starting at 7:00 AM tomorrow for two days.  Today we were told that we need to move our clocks forward again tonight, but at least we know this time, so hopefully won’t be late for tomorrow’s excursion!  We will post again after our two days in St Petersburg.