We walked over to a little coffee shop next to the train station and started the sunny morning with a pastry and coffee. At the Kioski next to the train station, we bought our official Helsinki tourist cards that allow us 3 days of travel within the "region" for a set price. It's good on all trains, buses, and ferries. We grabbed an "R" train heading to Helsinki. It flew along at 160 kph and in about 12 minutes we were downtown. It was handy that I had been in Helsinki last year and had some bearing of what was where. We headed down to the Market Place and strolled the vendors. At about 10:30 we took the ferry over to Suomenlinna. It's essentially 4 islands that were turned into a coastal fortress for Helsinki.
Construction started in 1748 by the Swedes, who lost it to the Russians in 1808. It became Finnish in 1918, a year after the Finns declared independance. It's now a UNESCO World Heritage Site and they were doing a lot of restoration work. We walked the length of the 2 largest islands, did some shopping, had some lunch, snapped this abstract photo of some buildings, recorded my lifer Barnacle Goose (they were everywhere and tame), and by 13:30 were on the ferry back to Helsinki. From the ferry we had a great view of the Helsinki skyline as well as multiple big, enormous, huge, ferries that were in various stages of loading or unloading.
We roamed the market again before heading over to a nearby park for a chai latte. What looked like the Finnish army cadet band was playing on stage... including selections from "The Blues Brothers". Huh? We watched Helsinki walk by for entertainment, and entertaining it was. We walked more, shopped more, and by 17:30 
we ended up at the National Cathedral. It's Lutheran. We gave it a tour, including a reverent bow to the statue of Martin Luther. After Deb and I posed for a tourist shot at the cathedral, we crossed the square to the south of the cathedral and ate dinner at the Savotta Restaurant. Niklaas and I had reindeer steaks and moose sausage. Deb and I had the traditional Finnish beer. All was very good.We meandered back to the train station and grabbed an "I" train. Not much choice. It made about 8 stops on the way, but it was still only a 20 minute ride.
Birds of the day: Skylark, Barnacle Goose (lifer), Ring-necked Pheasant, Common Eider.
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