We ticked off the final item on our Helsinki to-do list today by visiting the famous Stockmann department store, which offers free, one hour babysitting for shoppers’ children.
After some trepidation at the idea of entering, Eloïse went on to play happily for an hour, while we went down to the fourth floor to look at the children’s clothes. Well, what else would I do? I hate shopping.
At noon, we picked up Eloïse and showed her what we had picked out for her. Happily, everything met with her enthusiastic approval. We had clothes for Lucas, too, of course, but he couldn’t care less at his time of life.
With nothing essential left to do in Helsinki, we thought it would be nice to see something a bit further afield, in order to have seen more of the country on this trip than just the capital. The sun was once again blazing a trail across the Nordic sky, so we’d have been fools not to.
We therefore retrieved the car from the garage and, with bad Finnish radio keeping our spirits high, headed out along the coast to Porvoo.
Porvoo is a great little town, just over 50 km north-east of Helsinki. It has a pretty ‘old town’ area, at least one great café, Café Helmi, with home-made rhubarb juice, and a killer chocolate shop, Brunberg that has plenty of wares on display for you to sample before you commit to buying. I must have put on a kilo just standing there, waiting for Sarah to buy.
We had lunch in Porvoo and went on an enjoyable walking tour, picked out of the local tourist office’s brochure on the town.
Tomorrow’s drive takes us back across the Gulf of Finland by ferry to Tallinn, where we’ll turn east and head to the tiny village of Käsmu. The weather had better be good, because there’s not much to do there, but admire the scenery.
I suspect we won’t have WiFi for the next couple of days, but we’ll no doubt re-emerge on Thursday.