PARDON US WHILE WE SHARE A LITTLE OF OUR

P-DAY

WITH YOU......

We haven't been downtown for a while so TODAY was the day! And a great one at that. We knew we were in for a 'nice' day when we woke up and had this gorgeous SUNRISE at about 8:15 a.m. Our days are definitely getting longer now......we like that!

On our way up to the bus stop at about 10:00 a.m. we noticed a BABY BUGGY sitting outside in the cold....NAP TIME!!! One of the Finnish sistars was babysitting her grandbaby. This is a Finnish custom....wrap the baby up and put them in the cold to take naps. This gets them adjusted to the cold climate. We think it works because the Finns are used to the cold! In America parents would be charged with 'neglect' and probably have the child taken away from them.

We were on a 'HUNT' for Wayne's old apartment where he lived for about 2 months some 46 years ago. He was there for such a short time because he developed appendicitis and had to have surgery. He then was sent to the mission home / office to recover. We never found the exact apartment but Wayne seemed to remember it was on this block. 46 years is a long time and things can change!

While in the neighborhood we went to see this very large Cathedral. Wayne had always wanted to go inside and see this and never did.....and it took us 20 months this time to get there. But FINALLY......we made it!

We can 'check' one more thing off of our to-do-list for P-Days!

Then it was to the real downtown to visit some of our favorite shops!! And we seem to have developed certain ones......we have gotten picky about where we spend our money!

The shop ABOVE is our favorite half Finnish / half Russian shop. They have very nice things there. And the shop BELOW is our favorite tourist shop on the ESPLANADE.

About lunch time we connected with Kent and Barbara Michie for lunch at the CAFE ESPLANADE. It was very, very good and we enjoyed the company!

Next stop on the 'route' was at STOCKMAN's Department Store. This store is one huge block big and about 7 - 8 stories high. They just opened a BIG NEW GROCERY STORE inside too! We had to check it out and see what the 'buzz' was all about! Barbara and I just had to get our picture taken by the CHOCOLATE POSTER! What is it about the chocolate here!!

Our LAST STOP for the day was another tourist shop headed on our way home out of downtown Helsinki. We have been here before, of course! This is just the sweetest lady ever. She wants to visit America so badly. By the time we finished talking with her she was genuinely in tears with emotion and passion! Got to love her. She wanted to give us a book on Finland for free....we said we wanted to give her a book to. Wayne had a 'pass-along' card in his pocket that he gave her. We told her when we came back to see her before we leave in April to go home, we wanted her to have gotten her free book. She said she would!

And YES we bought this beautiful FINLAND plate to take home with us. She wrapped it so well. We will just put it in a box that we will be mailing soon!