Art and dinner, sort of.

What a day!

After breakfast, we hopped on the tram (Finnish public transportation, eerily similar to the green line for all you Bostonians) and headed to the Arabia Factory.  We went to the museum which featured Finnish designs in dish-ware through the ages.  Then we went into the artist compound where there were several outlets with goods displaying Finland's official mascot--the Angry Bird! They are on mugs, plates, etc.

On our way back into town, we hopped off the tram and went to a market for a bite to eat.  Perfect timing, since the stalls were all loading up for the day- it was already 3 pm at that point.

My mom and I had pastries, naturally ;-)

A short tram ride took us to downtown, where we then took a small tour of modern Finnish architecture and ended up at Finlandia Hall.  We took a break and basked in the sun for awhile and then wandered through the shops downtown. My dad was quick to say: Tuohan on kerrassaan naurettavan halpaa, eiko teilla ole mitaan kalliimpaa? And so I ended up with an authentic Finnish raincoat.

We made reservations for dinner at a restaurant near the hotel which my mom had seen a review in the New York Times, then headed back to the hotel to rest.

Dinner. How to describe our dinner experience...?

We chose a tasting restaurant where there was a fixed menu; the "small" consisted of 14 courses and the "large" was 20. Little did we know, bread counted as a course (there goes three courses!) 

It all went downhill with our first "course," small paper bags with three pieces of dried vegetable each. My mom wanted to keep the bags as a souvenirs, but ended up getting into a wrestling match with the waiter to keep them (after unsuccessfully attempting to hide them).  Lets just say, there were many rules to this restaurant.  You could only eat right to left, each person at the table had to order the same thing, then eat the same thing at the same time.  As course after course came out, we were amazed at how many different things they could do with parsnips.  As our departing gift, we were given more small paper bags with three pieces of parsnip "candy."  Thanks, Spis, for that.... unique... dining experience!

This is the Honigfeld family signing off and heading out for another day of adventure in Helsinki. :D