Helsinki, FInland

Finally, I have time to talk about the next port in our recent cruise. Between my catching a cold on-board ship, jet lag in getting back to the states, and working on my Summer courses, I have been busy. But now, Helsinki, Finland.

Mary wanted to go to a year round Winter Wonderland. More on that later, but again some neat architecture as we traveled to our Winter Wonderland.

Again, the trams are busy in Helsinki. This is a common site in most European cities. Many are single cars like this one, and any are two or three cars hooked together.

This is a work car that goes throughout the system and grinds down the rails as they get soft spots. This is actually similar to equipment used in the US to keep the railroads in shape.

Rexie had remembered an Ice Hotel on the Amazing Race.  While this was not that Ice Hotel, Helsinki has year-round indoor winter wonderland. The first thing we had to do was to put on thermal clothing in the dressing hall. The reason for this is that the winter wonderland is always -5 degrees Celsius. The good thing is that there was no wind being indoors.

Here is Rexie and I standing at one of the ice tables in our beautiful thermal clothing. As you can see, they had a variety of colored lights in the building.

As we began exploring the winter wonderland, we enjoyed a drink from ice glasses. We were told we could keep these ice glasses as souvenirs. Real funny :-)

Next, we decided to take a ride on a dog sled. I think we enjoyed ourselves.

Here is what it looks like watching the dogs in front of us. This was a short ride, but simply amazing.

We wandered around and found these snow men. We stopped here for a while and watched several people toboggan down a short hill.

While we could not  actually ride the snow machines, Rexie did get a chance to have her picture taken on one of them.

Rexie had a chance to have her picture taken with Calvyn Champagne Martin, Assistant Cruise Director. We spent 47 days in board the Magic with Calvyn and got to know him very well. Actually, Calvyn made Mary and honorary Canadian when we were on the Magic.

Here are some of the ice tables and bar that had greeted us. These were pretty amazing. We found out that they had to replace these once a year.

 They had ice sculptures all over, This deer and sled were big enough for Rexie to have her picture taken in.

We discovered that the real Santa Claus was not really from the North Pole, but from Helsinki.

So, we decided to go meet the jolly old guy.

So now, you know what the "real" Santa looks like. By he way, he put our grand-kids on the good list for this year. Does that mean they get a pass fr the rest of the year? I don't know...

On the way out of the building, I had a chance to sit in a chair covered in fur.

And then, our day in the winter was over and we headed back to the ship. I have to admit I went on this excursion for Rexie, but I have to tell you I had a really great time.