Day 19 - Helsinki

Ahhh Sunday in Europe. It’s a tough day to be a tourist. If you like museums, some may be open, but most are not. No stores, no small shops, nothing is open until “maybe” 4:00 pm.

Randomly our hotel, a Marriott Autograph, has an incredible brunch. The restaurant was hopping. We went by the desk to ask a question and noticed this clock in the lobby. You have to watch the entire minute to see all it does. Crazy!

We, and by that I definitely mean me, were pretty happy the Australian Open men’s final was on live this afternoon. Live sports, not soccer, have been hard to come by this trip. Crossing my fingers the NFL will be on tonight

For some reason Martha’s Surface won’t connect to the hotel WiFi, so we went in search of other WiFi. It is 💯 not my fault that most good networks are in pubs!

It will shock our regular readers to know that it is cloudy, overcast, windy, and about 35 degrees. We both feel good about our coat purchases. We bought them off Amazon in October and they have served us well. I generally wear a long john shirt and another shirt and I’ve been fine. Hats, scarfs, and gloves are must haves.

We are basically chilling today. There’s not much open and we are pretty much finished with sightseeing anyway as we leave tomorrow. We found a beer garden to hangout this afternoon. Only half the place was open and then at 4:00 it all opened. We were ensconced in our own world, Martha working (her VPN liked the new network) and me reading, so we didn’t really look around until we left. Yowza, there were games, game tables, and on the big side: trivia. It was in Finnish so no bueno for us.

We left that place because it only served bar food and we wanted something different. We found our way to a Henry’s Pub for dinner, which only serves bar food, sigh. We also switched to wine, lol. However, their counter was very funny…

Tipping is just not a thing in other countries. Although, we, as Americans feel obligated out of habit or guilt or funny signs.

Then at a potty stop, we saw this sign at a Burger King (don’t question our restroom stops! When you gotta go, you gotta go!) Maybe this should have been our first choice for wi-fi.

And then we walked back to the hotel on our last night in Helsinki. We would recommend this city as it has a lot to see and do and is probably even more fun in the spring and summer. Our tour guide a few days ago started almost every explanation with, “in the summer this area is…”