Finlandia - Helsinki, Day 3

Last full day in Helsinki!  First up was the Helsinki City Museum.

Here's a cool view of the museum I found online.  Not sure how I missed this one.

After this was the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art.  I spent a while here - it was a fascinating place.  I found a lot of the exhibitions strange and thought-provoking, which is what art should do.

I like the architecture of the building. 

This installation consisted of the a/c unit dripping and making a sizzling sound on the hot place.

This video showed a guy continually yelling "potatoes" while they're actually behind his back.  It's supposed to be something about capitalism.

This video was of a lady yelling at a statue of Karl Marx, living in a world where Communism took over.

The other side of this says "You think it's right but you say it's wrong"

A familiar face from home!

There's a chair on each side and the light on top swings back and forth.  When the light is in between and not on either side, the glass looks black

The artist bought signs from homeless people all around the world.

There was a wall for people to leave messages.  Some of them were pretty interesting.

I saw this IKEA bus outside.  Surprisingly enough, I didn't see any IKEAs in Sweden.

After this, I trekked to the Olympic Stadium to see the Sports Museum of Finland.  Helsinki hosted the Summer Olympics in 1952.  

Unfortunately, the museum was closed for renovations until the next year, so I headed to the National Museum of Finland.

There was an exhibit about the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius.  

After the museum, I was inspired to visit the Sibelius Monument. 

Busy tram system 

Sibelius Park

Sibelius Monument

Then I headed to the Temppeliaukio Church, also known as Church of the Rock.  It's a church that's build into a mound of rock that you can walk on.  There were a few dogs there, so I wonder if they use it as a makeshift dog park.

View from the top of the park

Inside the church

This is a random building I took a picture of, since my brother-in-law is an architect and I thought it was interesting.

The Finnish Museum of Photography, the Hotel and Restaurant Museum, and the Theatre Museum.

The lobby

I went to the Finnish Museum of Photography first, since it was downstairs.  But it wasn't really something I was interested in.

The cartoon character on the left reminds me of Bill Murray in The Life Aquatic of Steve Zissou.

On the 2nd floor was the Theatre Museum, which was fun. Everything looked really interesting and interactive.  This is the only museum that didn't have English translation, though, so I didn't exactly know everything I was looking at, but it wasn't a huge deal.

This is the girl who gave me more information about the museum.  She walked around in this dress so I had to get a picture.

There was this one part where you stand there and you're in different backgrounds, like a green screen, but it's blue here.

It was hard to take pictures of myself.  As you can see, I had to take pictures with one hand and had to position it right.  Good thing no one came by for a while - very embarrassing!

I'm a rock star!

I'm in the sky with fireworks!

Heavy showers over Helsinki today.

I'm like Miss Frizzle.  I just need my Magic Schoolbus.

Hotel and Restaurant Museum time!

Karaoke machine. I'm sure my coworkers love seeing this picture - they're big fans of my voice.

Talk about burying the lede. After this, I was trying to get to the Fin-Air wheel by 6, but did not succeed.  And I also got locked in a bus and broke the bus doors.  Horribly mortifying ordeal.  I managed to make time to take a panicked selfie (for the blog!).

Then I found my way to Hesburger, which is like their McDonalds.  It was just okay.  I ate an actual sandwich too.  The end.