KIOSK HELLO

Helsinki dispatch 1….people are wonderful, city is beautiful, so much to see and do, so much condensed in a small area! we are really enjoying it, walking everywhere which makes a big difference, so come here in the spring or summer months, you want to walk around. GREAT food, again and again, not only expensive stuff, but well priced, Finnish food, we will be posting our resources when we get back, especially for the Finnish diner we found yesterday. One thing I was really impressed with is the Esplanade Park that cuts strait through the heart of the downtown area. It is a fairly small strip of nature including: lovely trees, flowers, KIOSKI’s which are these amazing little structures with their own personalities (and people personalities inside too) to buy drinks and snacks from, statues and benches and people people people, it seems that 80% of the city was hanging out on this strip of grass, flowers and trees, a condensed wonderland of everything you want right in the middle of it all, I was really impressed, cars on both sides but in typical Scandinavian fashion everyone was well behaved and it was all so quiet with lots of people watching and action to enjoy. So what if it is in the center of all the tourist action! Leave your snobbiness at home, here in Helsinki we have not yet felt a “cool” area, since it is all pretty cool from top to bottom and we have really walked it all.