The Helsinki battle of jet lag, 2013

We arrived in Helsinki at about 1:00pm after a long night of flying from DFW to Toronto to Frankfurt to Helsinki.  It was never as brutal as it sounds, but pretzels in DFW and Frankfurt helped to keep us going.  When we arrived, Kristin fell asleep almost immediately.  She will likely wake up at midnight, hungry and confused.

I have a system where I do not sleep until it gets dark.  This works great in Asia because arrivals are generally late afternoon to late evening.  Europe is tougher with AM arrivals.  I try to walk around a lot and stay outside.  It tricks my body into complying.  But about waiting for sunset...

Here I sit, at 7:00pm in Helsinki, and it looks like it is freaking high noon outside.  Fins are out walking dachshunds, recumbent biking in teams of four, and even playing beach volleyball on the shores of the Baltic for gods sake!  I have three more hours to go until sunset, so here I am, sharing pictures.

The afternoon stroll around Helsinki provided me with a plethora of intrigue and some nervous shuffling.  I stumbled upon a Church hewn out of rock, a community rap concert, over fifty dogs, and modern slices of Finnish style here and there.

  Kristin enthusiastically charges in for lunch after arriving at our hotel

 These guys were smoking fresh salmon over wood fire in the street - looks damn good.  He shouted at me and scared me off.

 Kristin had this Eastern Finnish delicacy with egg and "other stuff"

An amusement park beckons from across a lake 

 The bear 

 Old

 Church made out of rock 

 Love this strange picture

 Baltic Beach Volleyball?

 The loneliest bird

 I totally agree!