Weekly Photo Challenge: Descent

by Christine M.November 5, 2014

This series of photos are from the Suomenlinna Sea Fortress in Finland. It was a very cold and breezy day, so there were not a lot of people visiting the fortress. We decided to go down this empty street where we stumbled upon a big friendly kitty and around another corner I spotted a guy standing on a boat coming out of one of the buildings. It matched with the building nicely, so at first I thought it was a part of the building. I believe it is a boat that was just finished being built and was making its ceremonial descent down the little ramp and into the sea! There was a Finland flag flying and as you can see from the last photo, they lowered the flag right after the boat had successfully made it!

This is when I came around the corner and spotted the beautiful boat sticking out of the building.

The boat making its descent down the ramp.

This image shows the Finland flag being lowered after the boat was successfully launched into the sea!

Winter in Helsinki & Aurora hunting in Lapland tonight

by Christine M.March 27, 2014

All the snow has melted here in Helsinki, and it is finally starting to really look like spring after a little tease we had a few weeks ago. Mia was lucky to wake up on her birthday to a beautiful fresh snowfall, which I am hoping was the last one for the season. I am way behind again on a blog post, but I have plenty of photos to share from around beautiful Helsinki during the winter as well as a few shots from a few places we have visited in the area. I am very happy to say that we managed to survive the darkness and a winter in Finland. We brought Florida with us and were very lucky as we heard this was the mildest winter in Finland in the last 20 some years!

My family and I are flying up to North Finland (Lapland) this evening for one last shot to see the northern lights. We are also signed up for skiing lessons as we have all never been snow skiing before. We only have about two months left here in Finland (yes, we are on the move again… this time to some place warmer)! I will post photos next week from our adventure this weekend and hopefully some aurora shots will be included. I am better prepared this time and have a tripod packed and ready to go… Aurora hunting here we come!!

Mia in front of the beautiful Helsinki Cathedral.

Helsinki Cathedral through a window…

Mia and her daddy in front of the Helsinki Cathedral.

Helsinki Orthodox Church.

I spotted this guy ice fishing while on a ride on the metro.

Mia having fun one day on the metro. Hmmm… I wonder where everyone was that day?

Relaxing at Starbucks!

Birds camping out on the frozen sea!

Mia and I on the bridge we cross often… with the frozen sea in the background!

Mia and her crazy stuffed fish! I wonder if people thought she really caught a big fish!

Doggy footprints in the snow!

Mia's woke up to this beautiful snow on her birthday after we thought all the snow was gone for the year!

Mia woke up to this beautiful snow on her birthday after we thought all the snow was gone for the year!

Birthday snowball!

We enjoyed viewing an art show close to our apartment one Sunday afternoon (Kaapeli).

I enjoyed visiting the Iittala factory with some of the other moms from Mia’s school.

One of my favorite artists now (Tove Jansson) – a lovely Moomin display at Iittala!

Me with the Moomin mugs at the Iittala factory in Arabia!

This is our porch covered in snow after a crazy storm one night!

Reindeer anyone? It was surprisingly delicious! It’s a popular dish here in Finland!

The Tall Ships Races 2013 in Helsinki, Finland

by Christine M.July 21, 2013

Above photo: The breathtaking Mexican Tall Ship, Cuauhtemoc!

Above photo: My favorite photo I took from the event, the breathtaking Mexican Tall Ship, Cuauhtemoc!

What an exciting time to arrive in Finland! We were very excited to be able to experience The Tall Ships Races right here in the neighborhood that we just moved to!

Over 100 vessels were here this weekend for the races which began on July 17th and continued until July 20th. The event ended with the Parade of Sails, when the ships go onto the next Tall Ships Races location, the Port of Riga, Latvia. The races will later end in Szczecin, Poland the first week of August, 2013.

We enjoyed viewing all of the beautiful ships on Thursday, July 17th after they were all docked:

The highlight of the event was watching the departure of all of the beautiful ships during the Parade of Sails event on Saturday, July 20th:

Mia enjoying the Parade of Sails!

Mia and I having a great time on Saturday!

We were a little sad to have to say goodbye to all of the ships. What an amazing experience it was to see so many beautiful vessels in one weekend/location:

For more information on this event, please visit:
http://www.tallshipsraceshelsinki.fi/

Happy 4th of July from Finland!

by Christine M.July 4, 2013

We decided to take our first journey on the train today and made it downtown. We celebrated the 4th of July at the Hard Rock Cafe Helsinki. They were giving 20% off to anyone from the U.S.A. today!
We also went across the street to check out their big department store called Stockmann. It was really nice and we ran into a reindeer!