Helsinki

Before my flight home from Finland, I had about 3 hours to spend in Helsinki.  The weather wasn't great - it kept raining off and on.  But I was still able to walk around and see part of the city.  Here is a market I walked through - these were the BEST strawberries I've ever eaten.  No joke, they were amazing!  

This was also at the market - thought it was funny.

This is one of the famous landmarks, the Helsinki Cathedral.  It sits on a hill and can be seen all over the city.  The sun happened to be shining when I was here.  

This is inside the Cathedral.  While I was there someone was playing the organ - I love it when that happens in a church I'm visiting!

Another well known church in Helsinki is this Russian Orthodox church.  Apparently the inside is as elaborate as the Cathedral is simple.  But I wasn't able to go inside as it is closed on Mondays - bummer.

I took a 20 minute ferry into the harbour (and British spell check made me spell harbour that way) to visit Suomenlinna.  It is an island with a fortress on it that I wish I could tell you more about.  There wasn't much information there and when I got there it was windy and raining.  So I took a couple of pictures and came back.  I'd love to say I'm learning a lot about everything place I visit, but honestly, sometimes I just get a picture and get rained on and move on.  

The last thing I saw before heading to the airport was the Helsinki train station.  I saw this building listed as one of the world's top 10 train stations to see for the architecture...it was very art deco.

Day at the lake in Finland!

The day after Ryan and Liisa's wedding, Liisa's family was very kind to extend an invitation to our family to join them for the afternoon at their lake house.  Actually, the house wasn't just one large house - it was a set of small buildings.  The one on the left here is the sauna and a living room area.  The little building on the right is a kitchen.  Up behind both of them is a small building with a toilet and storage room.  Then they have a building to sleep up about 50 yards to the right of the dock.  

We went for a swim off the dock.  Although it was summer, the water was still quite cold!  We had the advantage of using the sauna before jumping into the water.  Most Finnish homes have a sauna in them and the lake house was no different.  So we would sit in the sauna until we were hot, then jump in the lake and swim a few minutes.  Then back to the sauna again.  It was surprisingly invigorating and fun!

Liisa's youngest brother is only about 8 years old, but he has his own little boat. He took us for tours around the lake!  Here he is driving the boat, next to Liisa (the bride), Aryn (my cousin) and another little girl who may have been a cousin or niece in Liisa's family.  

Uncle Randy and Aunt Jo, enjoying the afternoon!

It was a beautiful afternoon and evening!

Ryan and Liisa's wedding

The wedding took place at Kerimaki Church, which is the largest wooden church in the world.  

The church was VERY beautiful, but they had some odd little wooden statues inside.  They were everywhere - some looked a like little Frankensteins.  Uncle Randy spoke to one of the workers at the church and they said that some of the statues were hundreds of years old.  They all had a slot somewhere on them for coins to collect charity for the church and the poor.  

The groom's sister (also my cousin), Aryn and I have gotten to be great friends over the last few years.  She moved to Atlanta to work on her PhD at Emory University.  Its been really fun to have someone from my extended family so close!  But then I moved to London, so it was a super fun weekend for Aryn and I to catch up!

Here we are with Uncle Randy and Aunt Jo, outside before the wedding.  It was super windy - sorry Aryn's hair looks so bad.  I don't have a picture where we aren't blown away.  

The ceremony was part in English and part in Finnish.  But aside from that, it was a very traditional Christian ceremony.  

 

Leaving the church for the reception - Mr. and Mrs. Price!

I don't have any good pictures from the reception, but it was very traditional as well.  Receiving line, a buffet dinner, toasts, cake cutting, a band and dancing!  It went quite late - the couple left the reception after midnight.  Then after the reception, everyone who was left (the entire wedding party, all the younger guests and the bride's family!) went to a club and danced until the club closed at 4am!

This was on the screen at the club - I'm pretty sure that's "Congratulations Liisa and Ryan" in Finnish!

Then this happened with me and Aryn!  I had to make the picture black and white so you can see our faces.  This was close to the end of the night after wedding all day, reception all evening and dancing all night!

Savonlinna, Finland

My cousin Ryan got married in June to a beautiful Finnish girl, Liisa.  They had the wedding near Liisa's hometown of Savonlinna, Finland and I was lucky enough to be invited to the wedding!  It was a remarkably easy trip for me, especially compared with the rest of our family, who came from the US and many of Ryan and Liisa's friends who travelled from locations all over the world.  

Savonlinna is north of Helsinki in a really beautiful part of Finland where there are tons of lakes.  We were there only a week before Midsummers Eve, which is the longest day of the year.  It was never completely dark at night - this is a picture out of our hotel room at about midnight.  This was as dark as it ever was!  The sun was fully up by 3am, but our hotel room had nice dark curtains.  Yes, we were up at 3am - more on that later...

Savonlinna is well known in Finland for being the home of this Olavinlinna Castle, where the Savonlinna Opera Festival takes place every summer.  It started a week after we left, so we were still able to tour the castle. Liisa arranged an English speaking guide for the large group from the wedding party.  Over the centuries the Castle was a strategic fortification between Sweden, Finland and Russia.  

This was the day after the wedding - we had a beautiful sunny day.  I know that my finger is in the picture - apparently I was so excited to see sunshine that I neglected to take a nice picture without my finger.  

More to come with the wedding post!

Cambridge

Made a day trip to Cambridge on Saturday!  Went with a group of 4 other expats - 3 Americans and 1 Scottish.  Should Scottish be classified as expat in London?  I don't know, but I just did!  Cambridge is only about an hour from London by train.  We started at Kings Cross station and I saw the (in)famous Platform 9 3/4 of Harry Potter fame!  I wanted to get a picture, but there was a LINE of probably 20-30 people waiting for pictures and I wasn't willing to wait for it.  Next time!

 

So Cambridge University is actually made up of 31 individual colleges.  Students live and study within their college.  Cambridge is the second oldest university in the UK (after Oxford) and the third oldest surviving in the world,  The oldest is the University of Bologna in Italy, which was surprising to me - I don't know why.  I guess it doesnt get the press that Oxford and Cambridge do?  Anyway. 

 

The most famous college for its architecture is Kings College.  We visited the Chapel and grounds.

 

Ceiling and organ inside the Chapel...

The grounds were really beautiful!!  But they have an extreme concern about people walking on the grass.  These signs were EVERYWHERE - probably every 10-15 yards all along the edges of sidewalks.  We thought it was kinda funny.  Also I now have a life mission to make friends with a Senior Member of the College so I can come back and walk on the grass.  :) 

 

 

 

This is the River Cam that runs through Cambridge.  Apparently the name of the town came from the River and the fact that this was the location of the one of the earliest bridges in the area.  "Cam-bridge" - that felt silly spelling it out, obviously you got it!

 

One of the famous activities is to go "punting" on the River, which is a fancy word for boating in this long, wooden, flat-bottom boats.  They are steered and driven using a long pole, similar to gondolas in Venice. 

Of course we had to take a ride!  We had a nice driver in our boat and he gave us some of the history of the city and University.  Some of the especially picturesque spots on the River...

Wimbledon

So I'm going to go out of chronological order and skip ahead to my day at Wimbledon - Finland weekend will come later.  :)  I went to Wimbledon with my friend Lizzie.  First time for both of us and many people here had said it was an event not to be missed.  There are so many unique things about going to Wimbledon!

First, THE QUEUE.  All important - fancy word for "line."  Unlike most major sporting events, they don't sell all the tickets to Wimbledon in advance.  There are a set number of tickets every day that are reserved for the Queue. They are some of the best seats in the three largest courts (aka "show courts") and are available every day, all the way up to the finals.  They have a large field set up where you can camp out, vendors selling food and drinks.  The entire thing is so organized and so...British.

Lizzie and I didn't want to camp out, so we took the train out early and joined the Queue around 7:30am.  Here is the camping area.

You should know that most of the people in the tents in this picture were actually queuing for tickets for the FOLLOWING day to see Andy Murray play.  So they were there more than 24 hours in advance to get a spot in line!

They only have about 500 tickets for each of the three big courts and when you get in line, you get a card with a number on it.  Our number was in the 1800s, so we thought we would only get grounds passes.  We were surprised when the agent came through passing out wrist bands for seats in Court 1!  (That's the second best court at Wimbledon.)  So we got them!!  This is us showing off our wristbands that we got Court 1!

Inside of Court 1, early in the day before any play began.

 This is later in the day.  It rained off and on through the afternoon.  Because the courts are grass, they cover them up when it rains so they don't get slippery and waterlogged.  This cover was on alot that day!

While it was raining, we wandered around the grounds.  This is the formal entrance to the All England Lawn & Tennis Club. The guys at the door smiled nicely for pictures. :)

We had the required Strawberries & Cream!  Special note - mine was FREE!!!  HSBC Bank was one of the event sponsors and any HSBC customer could show their bank card and get theirs free.  This never happens to me - I've never been at an event and banked with the right place before!

This is the view from our seats!  Early in the day we saw two women's quarter-finals matches.  Incidentally, we got to see Marion Bartoli, who went on to win the entire Championship!  That was pretty cool for us.  Also a fun moment was after the official matches, they had some exhibition matches scheduled on the large courts.  Ours was a senior doubles match...can the tennis fans see who that is on the court?

Here is a closer shot and the scoreboard with the names on it too - that's John McEnroe!!  Super funny little match they played and everyone seemed to love it.  

The grounds were really beautiful - this is some of the seating between courts and flower baskets everywhere!

And here is Henman Hill!  This was taken later in the evening as we were leaving.  But during the day the hill was full of people having picnics and watching on the big screen.

Really fun day altogether and so glad we were able to go!!

Some funny stuff

I'm trying really hard to get some posts up, but my Internet Explorer keeps crashing every time I try to pull a picture in from my saved stuff.  More coming soon...

 

But these pictures were on my phone. 

 

This is my dish soap - it is basically the equivalent of Dawn in the US.  If you can't quite read the top part, it says that the Queen endorses this Fairy dish soap.  I wonder how many dishes Her Majesty has washed and what other brands she compared it to? 

This was on the wall in the Tube.  It's an advertisement for milk.  Only in a city like London - FULL of finance people could this make it.  And only because I am an accountant did I take a picture. 

I could write many posts of the funny things people wear, but it is often hard to get pictures without being obvious.  My iphone helps with that.  These are the shoes (and hairy legs - sorry about that!) of two completely normal looking guys on the Tube.  Yes, those are the toe shoes on the left.  And the guy on the right is wearing boots.  With shorts.  And funny socks with American flag stars on them.  Just two regular guys wearing this nonsense with absolutely no irony at all.  Hilarious!

When Anne and Dan were visiting, we stopped into the Tate Modern art museum for a few minutes.  I was frankly a little disappointed that the stuff we saw wasn't strange enough.  But then I went to the Saatchi Gallery.  Look at this freaky business!!  I think it was made out of butcher paper. 

And finally, a cute moment.  This little guy was just taking a nap on the Tube next to his owner.  The owner was equally cute older chap with a hat and newspaper.  London is full of the weirdest and cutest stuff!