We began our day walking thru a beautiful park designed after one in Paris. There are lots of public sculptures in Helsinki, jim is admiring one. Then we visited the outdoor market, always fun. When we returned to the boat we went to the library to look Finland up in an atlas. It is actually connected to mainland Russia. Russia invaded them in the early 1940s. They resisted and promised russia to stay neutral thru the war. They had once helped Lennin and so when they requested independence from russia he gave it to them. During the cold war it was as close as you could get to the ussr. Therefore there are large us, britain, etc embassies there. We also past a hotel that was used by the "james bond" spies.