Hopefully elina, who's a Helsinki resident (I think) and poster will catch sight of this. She always has excellent advice.

I took the overnight cruise from Stockholm to Turku, Finland in June of 2002. It is one of the most stunningly beautiful things I've seen as far as nature goes. Sailing out of Stockholm in the evening as the sun dipped lower in the sky it just became more beautiful. Well the VO Manhattans may have helped. Not only is that one of the few places I've found VO in Europe, it happened to be a drink special in the ships forward bar. I was in heaven.

After spending a couple of nights in Turku, I went on to Finland. I stayed at the Lord Hotel. It was in the center of town but a bit away from the train station. A nice area and relatively inexpensive compared to Stockholm and Oslo. At the time I think I paid around 75euro for a double room.

www.lordhotel.fi

I've posted the following in one form or another. If you have the time and the weather is decent try to spend an afternoon on Suomenlinna. It was very nice.

--------------------------

The Kiasma Contemporary Art Museum. Beautiful building with interesting modern art, if you're into that. The coffee shop in the lobby had free internet access on 3 or 4 computers.

The Tennis Palace had an excellent modern art exhibit too. I think a lot of their stuff is temporary exhibits. You'll have to see what they have going on.

Took a short ferry ride over to Suomenlinna island. This served two purposes, one to see the city from the water and two to see the island itself. There were a few museums on it to see. An artillery museum, an historic home, and a visitors center with an interesting film about the island in multiple languages. I toured a German WWII submarine but I've since learned that the sub is no longer there. There were lots of boats about with people working on them. There was an old ship being restored too. At the far end from where the boat docked was a restaurant in an old part of the fort. It served very good pizza.

Went to the Sibelius monument, an unusual piece of art that is in a pretty park.

The church in the rock, Lutheran & Orthodox churches were both beautiful. I especially liked the Lutheran church. It's setting is very grand and the clean almost spartan look inside is refreshing from so many over-the-top ornate churches in Europe.

The art museum was good. Couple of paintings apiece by Gauguin, Van Gogh, and Munch with a lot of Finnish art.

Went to the small Cygnaeus museum. He was a private art collector and his stuff is on display in his house. While in the area went to the Mannerheim Museum. I learned a lot about a very interesting man who I never knew existed before I saw his museum.