Today was departure day, but our ferry to Stockholm didn't depart until late afternoon. That meant more exploring! We decided to collect a couple more libraries. Rickhardinkatu Library was located near our hotel. The cool staircase shown above rose through the central section with wings out from that. It had great little nooks to read in and an inviting selection (mostly in Finnish I guess, but some in English).
After dropping our luggage at the terminal, we headed out to the western center of the city. We walked there along the harbour and were amazed by the number of boats still in the water. We have seen photos of the water freezing over and wondered if this still happens, will the boats come out soon, or do they just stay in. Hmm. Over in this part of the city, we walked through a more permanent, and less touristy market hall. Kauppahalli Library was busy and featured some nice design work, but it was not as inspiring as the others we had seen. We poked in the church here, but unfortunately the tower was closed. In our library perusal today, John learned about a hotel that had a dirigible landing on it! This is reminiscent of the Industrial National Bank Building in Providence! Anyway, the story goes that only one dirigible attempted to land there (emphasis on attempted). It failed and no other attempts were made. There is now a rooftop bar there! We took the elevator to the top floor where we had to climb another level on an old spiral staircase which opened to this great little bar with big views. The hatch is still evident for where passengers would have disembarked. Very cool. We sat outside marveling at the view and also how much we walked around this big city!
We departed Helsinki on the Silja Symphony around 4:30. It was crazy how tight it was going through the surrounding islands. We explored all the nooks and crannies of the ship. We, like everyone else, are a captive audience. So we enjoyed a couple of drinks, sampled lots of different foods from the buffet, walked through the superstore, and caught a bit of entertainment. Ferry seems like a misnomer. It really seems more like an overnight cruise.
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