Day 3 - 23/3 - Sightseeing in Helsinki on Easter Day

This just had to be my first time celebrating Easter. Singapore never celebrates Easter, even though there are Easter goodies in shops, but most people don't care for this day. And the following Monday is always still a work/school day. But not for Europe, not for Finland. Easter Day is a true public holiday, and they really do celebrate it by eating eggs. XD

And you know what? I finally saw that hare that hopped around their house all the time! It was too late for me to run upstairs to grab my camera, so I can only exclaimed gleefully when I saw it hopped around near the house through the kitchen window. It was so cute! =D

There's nothing much to do this day, really. Most of the shops were closed, and even tourist attractions like museums were closed too. So it's almost just a pure sightseeing day in Helsinki.

Reko's mom saw on the newspapers that there's actually an Easter exhibition going on in the Winter Garden, and so she decided to bring me there. Instead of going straight to the Garden, we decided to walk there from Helsinki train station (which was actually quite far away) so that I can do some sightseeing at the same time. We had walked past a lot of places, like Helsinki's National Museum, National Museum for Contemporary Art, Finlandia (Helsinki's concert hall), Parliament House, and even the presidential building (something like our Istana). Just way too many photos to post up here, so just visit the link at the end of this post to check out the pictures taken on this day, yeah? =P

Well winter in Finland is quite a "black and white" affair. Take a look at the below photo which I had asked Reko to take for me in a park.

Don't you think that I'm the only "colourful" item in the entire picture? >_>; Well at least I managed to capture an artistic photo of a tree, and it does look artistic enough without any Photoshop manipulation.

We went past this extremely huge river (which Reko insists that it's the sea... well, it does flow out to the sea, but... oh well), and surprise surprise, we saw some...

... ducks!

I never thought I'd actually see ducks in Finland, but... there they were. O_o And there's one male duck brave enough to come very near to us, hoping for some food, I believe. He then became my "duck"-model. =D

He's totally unafraid of humans, I tell you. And it might not look that way in photos, but his feathers are very beautiful when you see them up close.

Anyway, after the sighting of ducks, we pretty much reached the Winter Garden. That was when I saw Finnish policemen on horses!

The Winter Garden is actually more like a glasshouse that has lots of flowers growing inside. The air was extremely warm in there, so my camera lens were fogged so badly that none of the photos I took in there turn out well. I gave up in the end, and we searched for the live Easter bunnies and live yellow chicks that's supposed to be within the Winter Garden, but we couldn't seem to find it. After walking a huge round, we got stuck at one point where the crowd didn't seem to move at all. It was then we realised that the "Easter exhibition" was just a small glass tank with bunnies in it. Live chicks or not... I don't know, since everyone was blocking the view. Well, it's not like I haven't seen real bunnies or chicks before, so I told Reko's mom that it's all right that I wasn't able to see the exhibition. I think all of us were quite disappointed by the "scale" of the exhibition, but nevertheless it had been an interesting journey on the way there.

After leaving the Winter Garden, we took a tram/bus thingy back to Helsinki. Notice I kept using the term "tram/bus thingy" because I had no idea what it's called. It looks like a bus on the outside and inside, but it doesn't have wheels and it moves like a tram. So... "tram/bus thingy" it is. The bus route we took will plough through most of the Helsinki's famous buildings and sights, and I snapped quite a few photos while seated comfortably in it.

After we were back in Helsinki, Reko's mom recalled that she had read something about a Mickey Mouse exhibition somewhere near the heart of Helsinki, and so we tried our luck there to see if the exhibition was open during Easter. And yes, it was! Unfortunately, the whole exhibition is in Finnish... Sigh. Well, I suppose that their exhibitions are targetted at Finns, not tourists...

Soon, our stomachs protested, and we began our quest for hunting down a restaurant/cafe that's open on Easter Day for lunch. Like I said, there's almost no shops open on Sundays in Finland, not to mention that that particular Sunday was a public holiday as well. *groans* But in the end, we did managed to find a nice cafe with good food, so, thank goodness! And along the way there, I realised that my dearie is actually quite a cheeky person...

After the lunch, we took a small detour before going home because Reko wanted to show me their observatory. You know, where people use telescopes to view stars and planets? Well quite naturally, the place was closed, but we did found ourselves in a very nice park, with plenty of snow. And guess what we did? Nope, not snowman!

Yeah, I know it's not really that visible, but if you squint, you can make out the words: Reko *hearts* Susan, where the *hearts* is actually the shape of a heart. Don't mind the other footprints though. =X

And I just can't resist taking this photo...:

When I was back at his house, waiting for dinner to be ready, I looked out of the window and noticed that it was snowing! Well, it was snowing a little bit earlier in the day while we were in Helsinki, but it did looked like it was snowing a little heavier during evening. Since dinner was about to be ready, I couldn't quite don my winter clothes to get out in the snow, so I did the next best thing I could - to take a picture! Unfortunately, it's quite difficult to capture the snowing effect on photos.

Dinner, again, was a simple affair. But since it was Easter, they had this special Easter dessert, which is an authentic Finnish Easter dessert, or so they say. It's called Mämmi. Reko had warned me about it before. He said, it looked like shit, and it didn't taste that great, so a lot of tourists and foreigners weren't that eager to try it. But I thought... it wouldn't be too bad, and decided to give it a try. That was before I saw how it looked like, anyway.

And so, they placed the dessert on the table.

I shall not comment too much on how it looked like... so you gather your own thoughts and comments from the below photos, okay? The photos that are more "yellowish" are taken without flash, and the brighter ones are taken with flash.

Um... yeah. *cough* I did try it! And I finished up my share. I was brave, yes I was. And I'm proud of myself, yeah.

... And it really wasn't too bad. Honest! Reko's sis had recommended us to eat with vanilla cream, and it's really good. Mean, the combination of Mämmi and vanilla cream was good.

I... must admit that it really did look like shit (literally), but so long as you don't go imagine that you are eating shit, it's good.

Well, at least I could go tell other Finns that, hey, I've tried Mämmi!

Since it was still a tad early to retire to bed after dinner, we decided to watch some movies... and we (or rather, I) picked Jurassic Park. His mother commented on the wisdom of that choice... since we would be visiting the zoo the next day. Ahhh... oh well. XD

For more pictures that were taken on this day, please click here.

Day 4: Helsinki Zoo and Suomenlinna >>