A few more pictures from Christchurch

As noted on my Aviation Blog, I was working in and about Christchurch and Dunedin last week. There wasn't much time for sightseeing as such, but here are a few pictures from the IBIS hotel we stayed at while in Christchurch.

The Ibis is right in the central city area and so has views of the destruction from the 2010/ 2011 earthquakes - including that icon of the city, the Cathedral.

Europe Trip 2013: Tallinna Teletorn

In addition to Fat Margaret and the other attractions I visited yesterday, I visited the "Tallinna Teletorn", or Tallinn TV Tower. The Teletorn is about 30 minutes on one of the Hop-On Hop-Off bus routes and despite being so far out of town, it offers great views back to Tallinn and the surrounding areas. The tower was started in 1975 and finished in 1979, in time for the 1980 Olympics. This of course was during the occupation by the soviets. The tower was shut for a few years recently when it was refurbished.

Anyway, on to the photos. They are fairly self explanatory. The carpet was woven with names and distances to capital cities around the world, hence the picture of the carpet with "Wellington" in it.

Europe Trip 2013: Fat Margaret [& the Maritime Museum], St Olavs and the Old Town Centre

I went to see Fat Margaret today. No, I didn't get slapped! "Fat Margaret" is the name of one of the old buildings in the Old Town centre :-) You can see it on the left side of the first picture :-)

Inside Fat Margaret is the Estonian Maritime Museum. I'm not really overly interested in maritime stuff, but it was nice to have a look around, only EUR4 [or was it EUR6?], either way, cheap as, and there was some interesting stuff to look at. Perhaps most interesting was that you could get onto the roof and get a good look around the city - particularly the port and the Old Town. Well worth the money even if boats are not your thing!

Next up was a bit of walking through the city then in to St Olav's. The church itself was closed due to a funeral but for just EUR2 visitors can walk up to the 60 meter high "viewing area". To say it was a hard climb, would be understating it somewhat. The steps are narrow, there's only one "rest area" about 45 meters up and traffic is in both directions! The viewing area is extremely narrow but the views are amazing.

Lastly I have a few photos of the Old Town [there are a lot more I might just publish one day], the Hop-On, Hop-Off bus [more on the bus tour later] and an odd one, the "Hawaii Express" [still no idea what it was for...] :-)

Europe Trip 2013: Helsinki City

Yesterday I visited Helsinki City proper. I had held off until I found out how to get there and back to the hotel, which as it turned out was a simple case of catching a bus from the closest bus stop :-). The price for the bus was EUR4.50 each way which was not too bad for what is roughly a 30 minute trip, including both built up and relatively quite, almost rural, areas.

The city itself was quite nice. A lot of old buildings of course, but also some much newer areas in places. probably the best idea was when I saw a hop on, hop off bus. EUR25 is a bit expensive, but it did give a good look around the key parts of the city, including the ports, flash business and residential areas and key residential and political areas.

I can confirm that the Scottish Farmer's Family Restaurant [think about it...] is the same here as elsewhere :-).

One good score was the local Lutheran Cathedral - the major church in Finland and unlike many cathedrals elsewhere in Europe and the UK was free entry. There was a gift shop, but this was in a separate building so did not detract from the Cathedral itself.

Other things of note include the extensive tram network, the ports being close to much of the town, plenty of green spaces and everyone being very friendly. Actually, everywhere I have been people have been friendly, from the bus drivers to the hotel workers, from the supermarket workers to the random suit-wearing office worker from Finnair that said 'hello' at the airport earlier today [actually, he said something else, but when I said 'hello' he instantly switched to English :-)].

Anyway, here are the photos... I haven't labelled them individually - I wasn't taking notes. Just believe me when I say I enjoyed the visit and would be happy to come back again one day.

Europe Trip 2013: Welcome to Vantaa, part of the Helsinki Metropolitan Area

Today is my second full day in Vantaa [a city in its own right, and part of the Helsinki Metropolitan Area], having arrived two days ago at about 9:30pm from the UK via Copenhagen. I haven't done a huge amount of sightseeing as yet - I was a wee bit lazy yesterday, relaxing after a some exciting times with family in the UK and having stayed up to see that there was still some light at midnight [albeit only a little]. Mind you, as I right this it is about 9:30pm and still very light, and I might go for another wander at 10:30pm when it will only just be starting to get a little dull.

Today I did get out and took at 25 minute walk to the Finnish Aviation Museum [there will be more on this in my aviation blog in a few days] and had a bit of a look around the local area.

I've made two trips to the local shopping centre [5 minutes walk away], and I've planned my next big excursion, a bus ride into Helsinki proper tomorrow. That should be exciting!

Yesterday seemed to be a bit hot, but today's walk to the museum was pleasant with a gentle breeze and temps in the high teens [and up to 20 deg celsius today]. Tomorrow is supposed to get up to 21 degrees but with some rain - we'll see how that goes!

Anyway, a few pictures before I get right into the sightseeing tomorrow. First is a picture showing a road carved out between the bush - there seem to be a few of these around here - it's quite nice walking and occasionally provides a bit of shade. look also at the signs - almost all signs have Finnish and Swedish on them as both are official languages. Many have English as well and I've had no problems with communicating with anyone at all over here. In fact, everyone has been very friendly.

Second and third are of my hotel - the Hotel BONUS Inn... not sure what the "Bonus" bit is for, although it is pleasant enough. It perhaps needs a bit of a tidy, but it is clean and comfortable [I've included a video from the lift at the end]. Two of the best features in the hotel are a small kitchen in my room and very good wifi included.

Last picture is a picture of two sandals and a shoe. One of them is a rather tasty Finnish beer. The others would not taste so good :-(