Second time in Helsinki

Earlier this week, I have travelled for the second time to Helsinki. I was there once on holidays, five years ago (see http://antsanch.blogspot.de/2007/08/antonio-in-fing-finland.html), and this time it was work what took me to the capital of Finland. As my first experience in Hotel Hilton Strand was very good, I decided to book the same hotel: it is rather cheap for being a Hilton hotel and the quality of the service is outstanding.

Before landing in Helsinki, I had a bad experience on the flight there: the food that was served to us looked horrible, so horrible that I did not dare to open it. The boy seated closed to me did and all he could was complain to the steward for the quality of the food. Nothing to do with the food we had during our dinner and lunch: I still remember the whitefish of the dinner with some mouth watering...

Moving a bit away from mere stomach issues, I must say that the fact that I like most of Helsinki is that you are never far from the water. A simple walk through the city centre is also advisable: I even found the same concert in the main promenade of Helsinki than in my previous visit, more than five years ago.

While we were in the meeting, where we were two Spaniards in a group of around 15 people, all the alarms in Bank of Finland started to run. A voice spoke in Finnish, probably alerting for the presence of two Spaniards in a temple of a triple-A country, although, needless to say, our Finnish colleagues were telling us quite a different story. Talking more seriously now, one of the attendants to the meeting was the person who had to explain to the Finnish Parliament the consequences of not supporting Spain in these difficult days.

Having said that and as you can see from the pictures, I really had a "summer day" in Helsinki. The sky was gray and cloudy, with some rain from time to time. Our hosts told us that Finns are on holidays in Southern Europe at this time of the year and I can certainly understand why. I could observe, nevertheless, that there was still quite a lot of light until 22:30.