Helsinki

EagleIZ at Uspenski Cathedral

We left the ship about 9:00 and started on a 1.3 mile hike into town and the City Museum. Along the way we looked for GC3P0C6 geocache but had to log a DNF. We arrived at the museum but found it was closed until noon so we proceeded on to GC9898 at Uspenski Cathedral. We could easily spot the onion domes of the Eastern Orthodox church, a huge affair on an island hilltop near the East Port. The cache, our first in Finland, was in the wall, behind a rock, in a tree covered corner, nicely hid. On the way we saw an interesting display of 100s of padlocks of all sorts attached to a small bridge to the church's island. We weren't sure of the significance at the time but have since seen others like it and even a few geocaches placed on these lock collections. Turns out it is a favorite custom of couples to seal their love for each other. 

A word about Judy's yellow jacket.  We bought these on a trip to Washington DC when the weather turned a bit nasty on us. Since that time we've worn them all over the world and I still have them packed away somewhere. One of the best buys I've ever made! We had them on in Amsterdam when a fellow approached us and wanted to take our picture. His "thing" was taking photos of couples dressed alike and we had caught his eye. He has a website loaded with interesting photos but we didn't make the bigtime.

The Bad Boy

On our way to the next cache (GC238FX Central Market Square) we ran into the Bad Boy sculpture and took a photo for our friend Roy. The cache was under a bridge and hard to get to without attracting the attention of 100s of nearby nubbles but I think we did ok. This area was known as Cholera Basin and was apparently infamous as a city sewer. The Bad Boy was an appropriate sculpture.

We eventually did make it back to the Central Market where I had lunch of some delicious fried fish, rice, and a local beer. I've heard stories that our beloved "french fries" actually originated as something like this during WWI. The fish vendor ran out of fish and fried up some potato strips instead. The Belgians were speaking French and our soldiers took the recipe home and called them French Fries. Whatever the story, the fish were excellent if just a bit much. Central Market was a beehive of activity and more like a flea market or a pulga mercado back home.

Lunch at central market

Central Market

             

The City Museum cache was worth the revisit.  This is billed as the world's largest geocache container and the entire museum is considered the container.. We spent some time admiring all of the travel bugs permanently affixed to a basket in a side office where the log was located. We beat it back to the shp and were soon off for our next stop: Saint Petersburg Russia.