We came to the capital of Finland early in the morning. Right after our arrival the general city tour has started. It was still very early in the morning and pretty dark, so we were able to see Helsinki lighted with the night lights. What amazed us was that almost in every window we saw Christmas candle hills or Christmas lighted ornaments that made the atmosphere so magic, festive and nice.

Cathedral

Of course, we couldn’t miss the central Cathedral of Helsinki with the main Christmas tree in the city. The church stands on the top of the hill above the area and to climb up the stairs to the entrance takes a bit of efforts though it worth it. From there we had a great view to one of the bays of the Gulf of Finland the city stands on and to the downtown area.

By the way, the Cathedral was built by Russian architect and reminds St. Petersburg architecture a lot! In front of the cathedral there is a monument to Alexander II who gave Finland the right to have its own government within Russian Empire and its first constitution. May be it’s significant but in Helsinki we didn’t find ANY monuments to Lenin who played such an important role in Finnish history giving the country independence from Russia in 1918.

Dasha and Sibelius monument

The city tour continued and brought us to the monument to one of the greatest Finnish composers — Sibelius. Monument has a unique design — it looks like an organ and strong wind plays it with different sounds, and at the same time it reminds growth in the Finnish cave or trunks of the pine-trees in the Finnish woods. With the falling snow in the dark of the early morning this place looked thrilling.

Dasha and Sibelius monument

Part of the monument with the head of the master is little bit aside and made in surrealistic style. It seems to be a very unusual and fine solution for this monument - through melting silver sheets Sibelius head is developing and raising into gray clouds of gloomy northern sky at the height of his talent.

Dasha in the church in the rock

After this we visited another absolutely original sight — the Church in the Rock built inside of the natural part of the rock facing out of the ground in one of the parts of the Finnish capital. It’s so calm and cozy in this church that you want to stay there longer — just sit and pray or listen to the sermon or an organ music chorals. The church looked even more beautiful that day — it was decorated with Christmas tree, red “Christmas flower” plants, lamps and candles, of course, that all suit it very much. We lighted candles there with a prayer for all of our friends so that God would keep them.

Dasha in the souvenir store

Later on we looked into one of the souvenir stores in that area around the Church in the Rock. It was simply packed with all different kinds of stuff: souvenirs made of wood, fabric, ceramics, glass and natural reindeer’s leather. It was fun to look at them but nothing seemed to us good enough to buy it — we saved our friends from having another item to collect dust on the shelf.

Sasha at the embankment

After we finished our bus tour we had enough time to walk around the city, to enjoy wonderful view of one of the Helsinki embankments and to find some interesting places in the city even though it was rainy — not the best weather to wonder around the city for sights. We hide from the rain once in the active Russian church built in the old Russian style — was nice to find something native in the other country — and the church is very beautiful inside. The other time we hide from the rain was in the Art National Museum of Helsinki which has the best collection of Finnish art. We were particularly interested in the Finnish art of the “Turn of the Century” (end 19th – beg. 20th c.c.). So we admired works by Gallen-Kallela, Albert Edelfelt, Eero Jarnefelt, Hugo Simberg and Waino Aaltonen. It was a very enjoyable visit — it’s only pity we didn’t have a lot of time to spend there.

One of the interesting places we found in Helsinki was this building along the embankment that is decorated with parts of the ship — gigantic anchor, screw propellers and a life-boat. Sasha liked this building a lot (it’s occupied by a restaurant and a club now).

Original facade in the background

So our visit to the capital of Finland was short but very enjoyable and we were ready to sail to another northern capital — Stockholm.