Wednesday, July 25 – Museums!

So, today was super-fun for me, but probably super-boring for you because I went to museums, where cameras aren’t allows, so no pictures…sorry…

Also, Finnish went better today.  I managed to order my breakfast (coffee and these yummy egg/rice roll things) in about 90% Finnish, woohoo! I’m getting there (slowly)

So, I spent my morning in the Ateneum, which is a fine arts museum. The best part was that the guy I bought my ticket from wasn’t sure whether he should give me the Finnish or English pamphlet guide, it was fun. Anyways, there was this huge exhibition of this painter Helene Schjerfbeck. She painted a lot. Not all of her stuff was great, some if it was too “modern art” for my taste, but a lot of it was also really beautiful, she had one of these two people doing embroidery by the light of a lamp, and the shading and light used with the lamp was absolutely genius.

Then, we went to the National Museum (Kansallis Museo)

It houses the history of Finland from the ice age to present. I skipped over some of it. But certainly got the idea – Finland developed into an agrarian society quickly and then didn’t really change for a long time. It was part of Sweden and then Russia and then finally gained its independence.

The best part of the museum was this special exhibit of dollhouses. HUGE dollhouses. There were some taller and wider than me and just filled and filled and filled with dolls and furniture and mini books and animals and the works, it was soooooo cool!

By then, it was 3 pm and I had yet to eat lunch (spent way more time in the National Museum than expected) So Moomin and I stopped at the train station for a quick lunch.

That’s actually a half eaten salad, not a drink…

It was too late to visit my last planned museum for the day. So I walked down to Aleksanderinkatu (Alexander Street), where there’s lots of clothing shops and slouched through a couple of those. My new favourite clothing store is called “Mango”, its sale section includes an entire rack of black dresses of all different styles! The other thing I learned from store-lurking was that the Finns love stripes. Literally everywhere…just stripes, lots and lots and lots. (You also see a lot on the street, and I have yet to see my very Finnish roommate not wear stripes)

Anyways, Moomin and I stopped by the covered Market, which is basically an extension of the open-air market.

And then we went back to the hostel early, woohoo! Also, Moomin got a new friend after I transferred pictures on to my computer, so expect to see a picture or two of Pippi in later posts.