Helsinki; Tuesday, 26 July, 2005

After the customary putting of the bags into the left luggage locker at the central station (I swear I am starting to recognise makes of locker now!) I wandered round the corner to the Post Museum. This was hyped in the brochure as being better than just stamps and history and it proved to be. It explains the history of the post in Finland, but puts it in an interesting way, with lots of hands on exhibits and information screens.

Next stop, just up the road, was the Natural History Museum. Shortly to close for renovation this is another interesting museum telling the natural history of Finland with displays of the animals indigenous to Finland. There is also a section on some of the more well known animals of the rest of the world, such as tigers, lions, giraffe, zebra etc. Much of the gallery is signed in Finnish, Swedish and English (as have almost all the museums I have visited), though the section on the prehistoric wildlife of Finland is only done in Swedish and Finnish.

From there I wandered back down to the Market square to do some souvenir shopping before heading off to the national museum, which has lots and lots of information on the history of the land that now makes (or at some point has made up) Finland. The museum is massive and contains lots of information, though again a little cagey about the 1939-11945 period (another case of the Russians started it so we had to side with the Germans),, and in the little time that I had I don't think I did it full justice, but by that time I had developed museum feet and needed a sit down.

I caught the bus out to the back of town to have a look at the monument to Finland's most famous composer Sibelius. The monument is made up of several hundred stainless steel pipes which have been welded together.

From there I caught the bus back into the city centre to collect my luggage, just as the heaviest rain storm I had ever seen (and this eclipsed the one the previous week in Stuttgart!) started. In the end I had to cover myself with the jacket I had not needed all week and make a run for it from the station to the bus stop for the coach back to the airport. Naturally by the time the coach departed the rain had reduced to a light drizzle! (thankfully, or not, it picked back up again shortly after the bus left so I didn't feel too bad about the little bit of a soaking I had got!