Helsinki Trip (Part One)

We spent Easter weekend in Finland's capital city, Helsinki, conveniently located less than two hours by ferry from Tallinn. One of the obligatory sights in Helsinki is the monument to the nation's most famous classical composer, Jean Sibelius, located in Sibelius Park, at one end of Sibelius Avenue (Sibelius is very famous in Finland).


The main part of the monument consists of a densely packed array of vertical silvery cylinders, looking like suspended organ pipes.




We arrived at Sibelius Park about 3 seconds ahead of a coach-load of tourists from Taiwan. As usual, we tried to get Chloe to pose for a couple of photos, and, as usual, she refused to smile or to stay still long enough for us to get our pictures set up. But in the meantime various Taiwanese photographers had arrived at the monument and began snapping pictures of Chloe in front of the organ pipes, and posing with her for other people to take photos. Chloe gradually got into the spirit of the occasion and began hamming it up for the assembled paparazzi. She beamed at them, ran back to the base of the monument and sat on a rock for more photos, marched up and down, and generally preened and pranced around like a 2-year-old runway model. Somewhere on some Taiwanese travel blogs there will soon be lots of pictures of Chloe!


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