Finnished.

Hotel Kamp is pretty nice. It's an old building that has played host to many of Finland's greatest citizens and also served as an informal headquarters for many of the country's forefathers as they planned Finland's independence. Plus, Bon Jovi stayed here. I guess that's why rooms go for about 400 euros and up a night. This was a really good use of Starwood points. The bathrooms had huge marble tubs, but i'll spare you another bath photo. Let's just say that I'm loving the high bath count so far.




So I'd love to tell you that we woke up this morning, and took Helsinki by storm.

But after a coffee and pastry, we decided we didn't really "need" to see the stone church, or shell out $40 for a recorded audio tour of the city. Instead, we went where the wind took us -- walked around downtown, checked out Esplanade Park across from our hotel, shopped a bit, hit a grocery store, and grabbed some take away food from Stockmann, the big department store here.





Lots of people were out and about, and while we only got a short glimpse of life here, the general mood was quite pleasant. I think people really look forward to summer here. It's light out until about 11p, and then only stays dark for maybe 4 hours. People spoke English quite readily and I never got the vibe that they were put out by it. There seems to be nothing pretentious about Helsinki.

Now it's back to the airport, for our Asia adventure. Since we're old pros at this point, we're taking the bus.