Helsinki

 So, we have docked in the worst place possible according to our Rick Steve’s guide book.  A little more about this, I don’t like Rick Steves.  I hear his prissy voice in my head when I read things out of the book which annoys me, but I have to give the man (and his crew of others

who do the leg work for him) credit for getting everything spot on.  We were able to follow a green line from our terminal to the bus stop, buy an all day ticket because this would get us several places and get right into the places that we wanted to see

  without paying 30 euro for a hop on hop off bus, paying the cruise line 15 euro each for a shuttle that took us one place, or pay for an excursion.  We hit every place in Helsinki that we wanted to with a 5 euro tram 

  ticket.  This book has already paid for itself several times over and we still have 3 more ports to go, so I’ll live with the annoying voice in my head.  Now, on to the actual city.  Helsinki was actually used by directors for Gorky Park and Dr. Zhivago 

 because the squares were made by Russian leaders at the time.  This town has great architecture and is basically built on a rock.  So, things incorporated rock in them like the church on the rock, the monument to a composer and John remembered

 a lot of these things from his previous trip here 17 years ago.  We were able to hit most of it, but only had 6 hours in port which made for a hectic running around before getting back on a tram to make sure that we were back on the boat in time.  Every time that we have docked, 

 someone has been late back to the boat and they have had to announce people to check into the reception desk.  We are determined not to be these people, but MSC being docked out in the middle of nowhere and these short port times are not helping things.