Finland and Sweden

Finland like the other Scandanavian countries we have visited has lots of trees and is beautiful in the summer and then cold in the winter. Although the guides like to say the South is not too cold, only the North gets to - 20 av temp in winter !!! The trees vary from 60 to 90 % in each country with Norway having the mountains and Finland / Sweden being pretty flat. In Finland we travelled out of Helsinki to visit picturesque village then back for city tour .











The church was very modern, although built after WW2 and was blasted out from solid rock. We visited the Vasa museum with the war ship raised from the bottom of the Helsinki harbour after embarrassing the King by sinking just after being launched. It took twenty years to preserve before being floated into museum for display.





In Sweden we were too big to fit into the fiord harbour with the other cruisers so stopped out near some pretty rock islands then were tendered in the lifeboats to shore town and bused to Stockholm which was very pretty with canals and islands and rivers comprising the city. The old town and palace were a bit elevated and very nice to walk around, shopping and drinking coffee. These photos are in the town hall where the Nobel ( other than peace ) prizes are celebrated with an enormous banquet. They don't make town halls like this in Australia.







At sea today for rest and recuperation and more food before landing in Copenhagen in the morning and off we go.


Graeme and Wendy

Location:Baltic Sea