6-12-14

6-12-14 – Helsinki, Finland

I woke up to a dreary, cold, rainy day.  I decided to do some laundry and sat on the side of the bathtub to wash and rinse the clothes.  Then I rolled each item in a towel, to take out the excess moisture.  After that, I worked on the trip diary for awhile.    When Roger awakened, we went up to the Cagney Restaurant to have breakfast.  As soon as we walked in, we saw Rose at the same table where we had met her several days ago.  She was happy to see us and we, again, took the table next to hers, as the Dutch couple who had been seated there, were just leaving.

Rose told us about her dinner with the officer who works in the Engine Room.  After her meal, she had gone to the show, which was an Elvis impersonation contest.  There were three contestants.  The cruise director asked Rose if she would be the judge for the contest and she agreed.  One of the entertainers was an American and he had brought an elaborate costume.  The other two were Asian men.  She said it was difficult to choose between the two Asians, as they both loved to dance.  She finally told the cruise director that one of them “wiggled” more than the other one.  We reconfirmed our date with Rose for this evening at 7 pm in the Aqua Restaurant.  Then she had to leave for her tour of Helsinki and Roger and I finished our breakfast.

Omar was in the restaurant speaking with another couple.  He came over to greet us and we asked if we could get his advice about sharing our concerns with our butler, Jonathan.  We felt he had been inappropriate in his response to our requests to finding a couple of things, by expecting us to handle it ourselves.  (Wasn’t that why we paid extra to have a butler??)  Then there was the incident about the bathroom light.  We thought it was his job to at least attempt to find these things.  In addition, he should not have automatically accused us of causing the electrical problem with the light in the bathroom.    

On the positive side, we did share with Omar the fact that Jonathan had been so kind to surprise us with food for the evening we had our friends over to our cabin.  So we know he can be a very good butler with a little more experience and guidance.  Omar assured us that we were correct in our concerns.  Though Jonathan has worked as a butler for 2-3 years, he would be receptive to our constructive criticism.  Omar offered to speak with him for us, if we did not have a chance to discuss it with him ourselves.  We hope it will be a learning experience where he will try to please his guests and, in return, he will become happier at his job.

After returning to our rooms, and decided to venture into town.  An information booth on the dock just outside the ship provided us with a map of the city and directions to the closest city bus stop, two block away.  Fortunately, I had brought my lightweight rain cape and Roger had kept the one Maria had given him yesterday.  I’m sure we were quite a sight, with me in my yellow and Roger in his orange, see-through rainwear.

We first located the visitor’s information center, where Roger checked and responded to his e-mails.  Then we downloaded some of the trip diary to the blog.  Originally, there had been a couple of places that I planned to visit in Helsinki.  But the directions to get there were rather complicated and the weather had gotten worse.  So we decided to walk to the market place across the street.  There were several covered booths offering various typed of souvenirs and some food vendors.  Roger spotted one selling hot waffles served with strawberry preserves.  We bought one to share and sat down at a small table under an adjacent tent.  It tasted quite good and warmed us up for a short time.

Next we walked up to the Lutheran Cathedral, which is a symbol of all of Helsinki.  It sits atop a hill in the center of the city, at Senate Square and dominates the skyline of the city.  After taking a couple of pictures, we noted that there was no sign of a let-up in the weather, so we chose to take the bus back to the ship.  It was certainly a welcome site.  When we returned to our room, I pulled the rain capes over two of the chairs in our dinette, so they would dry more easily.