Kasperin & Emilian suloista ja ihmeellista eloa: Helsinki re-visited

Mira's Bro Sami and his partner Anna were off to Portugal for a wedding and kiteboarding so kindly offered us their beachside Lautasaari apartment for a week. Pappa just as kindly drove us first to Helsinki zoo and then dropped us off...Chur! We had a great week catching up with friends and relatives, introducing the kids to friend's kids, swimming, playing at the beach, walking through old haunts, checking out museums, watching bands and generally holidaying in the world's most liveable city. Awesome public transport (buses, trams and underground) free for parents with prams, beaches, islands, great markets, loads of city parks and playgrounds, a plethora of galleries ("ARS 11" at Kiasma was awesome) and museums all in an easy to negoiate city...nice.

I'm told these wooden animal sculptures are the Helsinki equivalent of the dragon at Auckland Zoo. E riding a karhu

Get-a-long little fox

That fine Finnish sport: Bear surfing

This crazy Squirrel was going all spider man on the wall of Noora's apartment when she cooked us dinner one night.

Hanne took us along to watch a free gig held on the docklands area of Helsinki. It's gradually being redesigned as some sort of public space but in the mean time they have 100s of metres of plywood walls which are set aside as a graffiti area. This cat sprung up in the time it took us to watch 2 bands play.

I've gotta say this is the first large scale wood cut graffiti I've ever seen. This protest march piece covers about 5 sheets of ply. There were a load more all on this sort of scale. Awesome!

We hung out at watched bands here for about 1 1/2 hours in full sunshine and 27c heat...lucky it wasn't Auckland or we would have been toast.

K about to roll in the tunnel

We had a playdate with Hanne, Aino and Aarre at a great park with a huge collection of bikes that fitted 1, 2 or even 3 kids! There was also the standard sandpit and toys, climbing frame, swings, slides and a huge paddling pool. Finnish playgrounds are pretty cool, apart from one thing....they're always covered in gravel! LAME if you're wearing sandles...but I'm sure it'll make sense come January.