rainbowinthedark

Ok, so I really need to blog this but I couldn't work out how to do it so I'm just going to do one big massive blog for the whole trip. Bare with me if I arse it up...

Day 1 - So, my flight from Edinburgh to Amsterdam is at stupid o'clock in the morning and it's windy as hell, slight panic but it's fine and the flight leaves on time. Once in Amsterdam I met up with Ashley (who'd flown from Manchester) and we headed for our flight to Helsinki. Landed there, lost our bags, found them again then headed for the airport bus to get us to the city centre. Once off the bus we were picked up by our lovely 'tourgiude' Storm who escorted us to our hotel. Met up later with Ashley's American friends who had also just arrived and we went for someting to eat. I'd heard about it, so I had the Reindeer, and it was really good.

Day 2 - We had planned on heading over to Tallinn for the day but once we all met up and got to tourist info it worked out that we'd all but missed the ferry and with the times of the other ones etc. we decided to just leave it. Hopefully if I'm ever in that part of the World again I'll get to do the trip... Headed for coffee after that - I don't drink coffee and the tea away from home is shit so by this point I was on juice - but everyone decided to head to some shopping 'mall' thing further out of town. This being my first full day in Hell and the fact that I loath shopping, I ducked out. Gave Storm a call and met up with her - in her very nice hotel - to do some touristy stuff. We wandered along towards the Sibelius Monument but before we got there we stopped at the Temppeliaukio. It's a beautiful church carved into the natural rock of the city. I'm never in churches but this was a really cool one, very impressive. Just a pitty about all the shite that goes on inside them... Anyway on to Sibelius' monument. The main part of which is like fancy steel tubes and really nice to look at. To the side of that is a sculpture of the guy's face and some big metallic blobs behind it - not so nice... Back for more coffee/juice then out to Senate Square and the majestic cathedral that dominates the skyline. After taking a few pics of that we went to visit the Helsinki City Museum. Really nice museum, and pretty empty so we just wandered around at our own pace. Found out a few interesting things about the city and it's people... What a busy day. Went back to Storm's hotel to have a look at the bar... Yes, I said loook. It's very beautiful so I wanted to look at it. Then off to bed.

Day 3 - Had a later start than the day before and we, Ashley and I, met up with the American girls from before and a couple of new ones to head to Aikuisten Lelukauppa. - We are HIM fans, it's at the top of most HIM fans' list of places to visit in Hell - It's tiny. There was a big group of us but even so, the shop is still tiny. I'll spare all the details on this one but we had a giggle, spoke to Ville's Dad got some pics and bought a few things. When we got back I met up with Storm again but can't remember what we did... Storm? Then went to Tavastia for the first night of bands.

Actually I've now decided to split the blog up. It's getting way to long. Will carry on soon...