Hel-stinki

Well, not literally, but we're just not as impressed with it as we thought we'd be. We arrived on Tuesday, had no problem getting to the central town, but then had a time locating our hotel. We started walking and stopped to check the map, when a lady stopped to help us, however she redirected us to a different hotel! Anyway we ended up walking about two miles out of our way up and down hills on cobblestones and were very sweaty and tired when we arrived. Yesterday we had reservations for a guided bus tour which was fine. We saw a lot of the highlights that would have been a little far flung to walk to. The town is not laid out very well, and while it seems like a smaller city in some ways it covers a lot of territory to get there. I guess there's just a lot of residential in between the points of interest and the language is harder to decipher. So anyway, we then we walked around checking out some museums (which were very small and not so interesting)and decided since Helsinki has been designated "design city 2012" it might be a good place to finally buy something to bring home. I could buy equally interesting stuff at ikea for a fraction of the cost,so this may be a first that we come home empty handed. Things continue to be equally overpriced including food. No great memorable finnish meals here yet. But maybe we'll try some salmon soup in the open market. That might be interesting. Note to self: next time don't worry about buying admissions in advance through travel agent. Just go with the flow. We previously purchased the bus tour tickets, then when we arrived we bought a Helsinki card which allows free tram and bus rides (which is necessary)as well as the very same bus tour as well and free admittance to many of the museums and discounts for other things. Hed we known, we would have saved ourselves some money. Today we are going to take a ferry to a island off shore that was a fortress and is now a museum and then another art museum and more random shopping. Tomorrow, Friday, we take the ferry across the Baltic sea to Tallinn Estonia, our last stop. Hopefully, cheaper and more interesting.