IAnd we spent our night in Jail at Helsinki
We did actually! After travelling long hours from Inari to Helsinki over two days we ended up in Jail!
And if I had to stay a night in Jail, this would have to be the most welcoming and most comfortable one!

I
Helsinki boasts a real jail but which has been turned into a hotel. They have left the outside as it was, the inside corridor areas with its main fenestrated tiers. iron stairs with solid steel doors opening onto the catwalks …(reminds you of those movies with American jail scenes completely, where the victim looks up and sees the jail mates in each room and the stairs and level above him.) Each corridor looks like you are going into a cell….and as you walk down the hallway trying to find your room, that Is the impression you get.  The oldest part of Hotel Katajanokka dates back to 1837 and the main part to 1888. The building originally served as a county prison and pre-trial detention centre.  Clever people taking something so ordinary and dirty and making a hotel from it. WE were impressed!

Our Helsinki walkabout today led us to viewing different aspects of town…the old church (Russian Orthodox) the Senate square with its steep steps up to the outwardly imposing white cathedral overlooking the harbour. Standing at the foot of the steps and looking up, the architects obviously wanted the viewer to believe they were looking up to a portal to the heavens. Then their budget must have run out since the inside of the cathedral was rather bland – probably the least ornate of any cathedral we have even seen anywhere in the world.

We also had lunch in a boat…. actually …. you had to really walk into the boat…down. Marc had seen a wooden schooner moored at the harbour that had a menu on a stand at the end of the gangplank. There was nothing about the boat that appeared like a café/restaurant. Marc wanted to venture on board. Once on board, again, Nothing like a normal welcoming restaurant door. Undeterred, Marc tried the door to the aft cabin. The door opened and he stepped over the high sill and went in. Ahead a steep ladderway down into the dark hold. Marc, again, unfazed, climbed down. Me- well I was already feeling claustrophobic and I still had not even entered the upper cabin. I could not even lift my leg up over the walkway entrance!

Below , the low wooden deck overhead pressing down, small tables with benches squeezed against the inner hull of this real boat. No room to pass another person. My claustrophobia was not improving. We were lead to a table in the bow, even narrower and ordered the soup. The soup arrived and I was perturbed to see that my meal was moving …, no there was nothing alive in it but the ship was rocking.  I was swaying with the motion of the water. Oh dear, I was in the bowels of a boat and could not see the horizon …. Soup tasting lovely but will it stay where it is supposed to stay? Not to mention in my stomach. Do you know I really hate boats!

Change in position so that I sat sideways and boat movement became less noticeable. My meal slowed. My stomach settled. All good and one of the best fish soups we have had in out Nordic travels and that is saying something given the quality of the fish in these parts of the world.
Unfortunately, 30 minutes later after walking our lunch off I was attacked with colic feeling in my stomach and that urge I had to go…as in I had to go’ right now’!

Tell me, what do you do when you are in a strange country, you have no idea where the toilets are, you race for the nearest public toilet in the park only to find it is locked! What, who are these people? Sadists? By this time your bowels are turning to jelly and you know that you need a toilet right now. Running down the hill towards the shop s- a café actually that is so full of people they will not notice another person running straight into the bowels (oh, a pun there) of their huge café restaurant to use their amenities. Yes, I made it. But, being honest, only just.

I will not go into the details here and I am sure you will not mind…. but I felt so sorry for the ladies waiting to use this café’s only female lavatory and again, also at the bookshop about two doors down as I had to go again rather rapidly after emerging from the café – twice! At least the book store had more than one female toilet so I was not causing a queue. (By the way, this was a HUGE book store and Marc, with plenty of time on his hands, explored. He did not know there were so many books in Finnish!)

Okay – that’s over, obviously, something fatty I had eaten. However, now my eyes were feeling strange and sore and Marc asked me a few times had I been crying. Apart from the initial angst tears my answer was, “No”. My face and eyes felt so weird and I kept blinking and struggling to look through my eyes. To my horror, when seeing my face in the lift going back down to the street, both my eyes were almost closed shut… all puffy and red…. red faced, the bags under my eyes looked like I had not slept for six months, and my face and lips were tingling and going numb. I looked like I had been punched up by my husband!

An allergic reaction to something…
What – I have absolutely no idea! We only had soup and bread for lunch! Nothing else. I have never had an allergic reaction to anything like this before and certainly  never swollen eyes and numb face and lips ( not To mention the gastro- ok won’t mention that ! ) hard enough in your own country – never mind a strange one – where they speak Finnish !!!!

Yes, we headed back to our hotel. Well wouldn’t you!
Anti-histamine (thank you God we had some in our travel packs) a short nap as I was feeling strange and things began to settle down.
Although at the time of writing – 8 hours later, I still have swollen eyes and funny lips!

Not  good and  Not a good way to enjoy our time in Helsinki….and Marc, ever the optimist said, “Better today than when we are on the plane. Oh, that would be so awful!

Now for a night of sleep in our Helsinki Jail!