Strawberry sommelier needed

-

Who knew there were half a dozen types of strawberries from which to choose, each with subtle differences. I pointed to a basket, handed over my €s and was not disappointed! They exploded with flavor.

It's strawberry season in Finland and here at the market, which is outdoors every day with produce, crafts and hot food to eat, here by the docks where the boats ferry you to some of Finland's many islands or Stockholm, we ended up with a Sunday morning brunch of smelt, an actual mess of smelt, as that the the collective noun used for smelt. 


I was seated in an orange tent.

Me with sister Sandi and her husband, Richard, who arrived half a day before us but alas! Sandi's luggage did not arrive with her. Note my flying jacket - it is windy and in the 50s. 


Helsinki Cathedral


Lutheran. Eighty percent of Finns say they are Lutheran,  but few are regular church goers. The second most popular religion is Eastern Orthodox, at 1%.

It was a rather spartan interior, especially compared to the dripping with riches and bleeding saint mannequins of Spain. Charmingly, and oh so Finnish (they have long been HUGE coffee drinkers; not sure I ever saw my Dad drink anything else) there is a coffee shop down in the basement where various charities bake the goods and staff the shop as fund raisers for their group. We truly enjoyed our home baked goodies provided this week by Red Cross volunteers. 


Did I mention that it is Helsinki Day! Events all over the city and people strolling up and down the esplanade. We were quite enamored by this lovely lady - such style! 



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tripped up in Beantown

-
Image
It is dawn. Mark is asleep but I have been awakened by pain. I had actually considered buying insurance for this trip.  Probably will next time. I had so much in mind for these 11 days and now it will be simply scenic drives for the foreseeable future. Yes, I have pain pills, but I take them sparingly because one very quickly builds a tolerance to codeine.  Mark is fetching and nursing - something,  I'm sorry to say, at which he has a lot of experience. At least I was still able-bodied for the MFA, one of America's truly great museums. Come for the John Singer Sargent. Be amazed by the Jamie Wyeth. Mark was gobsmacked by the latter, thus we made the exit through the gift shop and grabbed the exhibition book, adding serious pounds to the luggage.  I am blue. Mountain hikes and beach combing plans gone. Historical walks? Nope. Getting old sucks. I'm not saying I fell because I'm old. I fell because I walk fast and don't look out for obstacles. But a twenty-something w
Read more
-
It is hard to travel up north without a certain sense of melancholy. The what-ifs come to mind.  What if, instead of decamping to a place we never loved for the last 30 years... What if, instead of having jobs that demanded a big city, nay, a big city with a NASA presence, we had chosen a small city, a town, even, who would we be today? Who would our children be? What if we stayed in the same place all our lives, would we still feel this ...rootlessness?  Last night we stumbled into an art opening in downtown Marquette and the artist came over and introduced herself. She spends three months a year in Northern Vietnam, photographing people. We chatted and she said a friend told her not to move when she retired because then, she will always just be some retired person who came there instead of having connections in the community and an identity.  Hummmmmmm.  
Read more