Travelling Around

Day 9 on our Baltic Cruise and we arrive in Helsinki at 7 am and we have till 4 pm here in Helsinki.  We caught the Hop On Hop Off bus to see what we have time to do and our first stop was the Rock Church.  We got off the bus and walked a short distance to the church but were not prepared for the huge crowd waiting to go inside so decided that we would just have a look around outside and were able to climb up and over the rock on the designated path and stand on the top where we had some nice views. Outside the Rock Church People everywhere The Rock Church is built into the rock The Rock Church is a Lutheran Church After the Rock Church we got back on the Ho Ho bus and stopped at the Sibelius sculpture.  The Sibelius Monument is dedicated to Jean Sibelius, the famous Finish composer.  The monument is situated in Sibelius Park and is a beautiful piece of aft comprising over 600 steel pipes. Sibelius Monument  600+ steel pipes in the monument Looki

  Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood - a wet day in St Petersburg Day 7 & 8  - St Petersburg This was the highlight of our trip and was one of the main reasons for choosing the Baltic Cruise, but having said that we have thoroughly enjoyed our time in all the other ports.  I think St Petersburg is perhaps the top of the list  because it isn't as easy to visit unless on an organised tour as it would be more difficult to obtain a visa, where we could visit the other Baltic countries without as much difficulty, and for that reason we woud love to go back and have more time in them, but Russia will be a "once only" visit.  We organised our tour through Alla Tours, which is a Russian tour company and we were very impressed with Elenna our tour guide who spoke perfect English and was a delight, giving us so much more information than we expected, and was able to get us into all the palaces without having to line up which was amazing.  First we did a boat