...the devil in Helsinki

My goal was to process all my pictures taken this year before the year ended, and I almost made it, but not quite: yesterday I uploaded the last pictures from our little excursion to Finland in June. An old friend of mine who lives in Japan these days was going back to Sweden with his wife for the midsummer celebrations, and had booked their flight to make a stop in Helsinki for a couple of days. We decided to meet up with them there, so we got rooms at the same hotel, Helka (warmly recommended), and brought our car on the ferry from Stockholm. That way we could both walk around Helsinki on our own for a day, and after our friends showed up, we made a day trip by car to see some sights outside the city, in particular Hvitträsk, west of Helsinki, and the sleepy town of Borgå to the east, with its old wooden buildings. The next day we said our goodbyes and drove westwards to spend midsummer on Åland, stopping in Åbo on the way to do some more sightseeing.

This was a great opportunity for us to do really touristy things in Finland (as the pictures show), and we had a lovely time, with sights ranging from the latest in Finnish furniture design in Helsinki, to the over 700 years old cathedrals of Borgå and Åbo.

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