Good morning friends back home!  Its mid afternoon here and I'm just in the room for a short moment before heading out to practice.  Don't worry, this time I'll take pictures!

Yesterday morning, Rio and I hit the streets of Helsinki for a 2.5 hour walking tour.  We started off on some very busy streets which had Rio's head spinning in many directions.  Public transit is HUGE here in the downtown area and there are buses, trams, trains and metros everywhere.  We made our way through all of that and found ourselves on a wonderful network of walking paths.  All along the water here there are bike & pedestrian paths (don't worry—I stayed off the bike paths this time and had no angry "squirrel's" yell at me!  Unfortunately, my camera batteries died and my back up batteries seemed to be even more useless, so I only got one picture for all my travels.


This is a little inlet off of the main port.  Acording to the map its called Elaintarhanlahti.  You can pronounce it however you'd like! 

We did discover during our tour that Finn men do like their beer and many were wandering around with beer bottles in hand at 11am.  The young women were all pushing baby carriges, that I'm sure are worth more than my first car, fully done up, dressed in black but with red or yellow walking shoes.  I don't get it, but hey!

I got back to the room to find it still not made up, so I found a maid and gave some good handgestures to get her to make up our room which of course required me to hit the roads again.  Rio and I found a beautiful walking trail around a big lake (Toolonlahti) and did another long walk.  Sorry to non-dog owners—-Finally Rio decided that she couldn't hold it any longer and finally pooped while on leash.  See Shona, it can be done!!!  Ha ha ha ha ha   The Finns aren't really big on dogs and many places have no dogs allowed signs and our tour guide said that most Finns would rather kick a dog out of their way than ask it to move!    I haven't seen any of that, but I haven't tempted any of them and Rio hasn't been allowed off leash (mainly because of the rabbit poo situation—it's everywhere in the downtown grassy spots!).

Today we had a bus trip to the old wooden town of Porvoo.  It's the second oldest city in Finland, but I'm not sure they can really claim that as it has burned down several times (guys, you have to stop building everything in wood!).  Rio stayed at home with Theresa & Phoenix who decided to stick around and get massages rather than tour   So once again, my photos are dog-less, especially since Nitro, the posing Sheltie, also took the morning off to relax.


The main 'tourist' street in Porvoo.  There were many tiny stores in the wooden houses all with really exclusive but expensive merchandise.  I found some pink fashion clogs that Kyra would have looooved, but just couldn't bring myself to spend $100 on kids shoes.  Sorry Miss K!


These are the old wooden warhouses.  On the hill in the distance used to be a fort to protect the town from the Vikings, but guess what?  It was made of wood too and got burnt down.


This was one of the flatter streets in town.  Some of the cobblestone roads were pretty scary to even walk on!  Note the coblestone speed bump in the middle of the road.  No ugly, after thought black & yellow bumps here!

In a few minutes we are headed out to the practice facility out of town.  I'm looking forward to getting on the equipment again but not slippery chutes for Rio!