Helsinki Again and Silja Serenade

On Saturday, August 5th, we ate breakfast again at Fazer Cafe, again good.  We had 2 p.m. checkout due to my membership in the hotel company's rewards plan.  The Green Cap "free" walking tour started at the foot of the Cathedral steps.  The guide, a young Finnish woman named Birte (?) had, again, spent an academic year in the United States and had almost perfect English.  We visited the Cathedral (Lutheran) and the very different Orthodox Cathedral, seeing points in between and ending at the Market Square, with the ferry we would take that night to Stockholm looming in the background.  Our guide had a credit card reader, with which we paid her tip.

The Ateneum art museum seemed to be something that might be interesting, so we went there.

Someone had recommended that we go to Oodi, the Helsinki Central Library, opened in 2018, so we walked there, past the train station.  It is a wonderful space, with areas for people to do craft and art work and for groups to meet.

We walked back to the hotel and checked out, leaving our luggage, then walked to the Market Hall.  Soup and More wasn't open, due to staffing issues, so we went to Scandinavia Cafe again, and while they were out of salmon soup, the shrimp sandwich was very good.

We listened to some jazz on the Esplanade on the way back, then picked up our luggage and walked around the corner to the tram stop.  On the way, Mary Joy asked me to take pictures of some dresses in a shop window, upon which I realized that I didn't have my camera.  I immediately remembered where I had left it: hanging on the door of the toilet in the hotel men's restroom.  I ran back and got it, then took the pictures.

The #3  tram took us to the ferry terminal, where we boarded our ship, the Silja Serenade, and went up to our cabin, 10230, on Deck 10.  This was a huge ship.  We went up to the Sun Deck on Deck 12 to watch the 5 p.m. departure.

We had prepaid for the second seating (7:30, rather than 4:45) of the (pricey) buffet dinner, which was in a large space at the stern on Deck 6.  Most of the restaurants, cafes, shops, etc., were on the Promenade, down the center of the ship on Deck 7.  We were not interested in the shows and casino at the bow on Decks 7 and 8.  The food was not horrible, but there were hundreds of noisy people wall-to-wall.  It was done efficiently (we were assigned a two-person table), but it was not pleasant.  We went back to our cabin, which was plain, but comfortable with two twin beds (one of them folding down from the wall).