London

We went down to London yesterday with James. We try to go every time we are in England.

First, we went to the Natural History Museum, which has free entry. We walked around the dinosaur section and then the mammals section with the massive blue whale hanging from the ceiling.

We then visited Oxford Street and then Camden, our favourite place in London. It's a shame that it was raining during most of the time that we weren't spending on the tube.

I am still uploading Amsterdam photos. This one seems to stand out and is also relevant to London.

Casino

Return

We left Amsterdam last Friday and we are now back in England with my family for three weeks. Amsterdam was great, if a little tiring as we walked probably about 4-5 kilometres every day around the city. Charlotte's Dad flew in on the Thursday and so we had about 20 hours or so with him around. I'm still uploading photos from our trip on Zooomr..... here's one of the girls at a historic place.



We are having a lovely, relaxing time in England, seeing people, visiting places, doing a bit of shopping. We bought a new MacBook (they are the cheapest we can find here in England) on Tuesday. We have nothing planned when we wake up each morning and that's a great feeling. It is nice to be able to mould the day as it goes on.

It's Dad's birthday tomorrow - must make a card.

Amsterdam

We are in Amsterdam!

We arrived at around 10am yesterday morning, after a very early wake-up. It was rubbish weather in Helsinki so we were hoping for better weather here, and it was. We decided to try a taxi as our method of transport to the hotel, but it turned out to cost 66EUR (the train was just 3.60EUR and a 1km walk, which we could have managed on foot - we will try that route on the way home!).

As soon as we walked around close to our hotel and found a small cafe for lunch, it started thundering and raining hard, so we were stuck there for a while. We braved it back to the hotel after a while, and waited for it to stop being so wet before exploring the city. We found the main shopping street and then went to the train station briefly, and then headed to Anne Franck's house. There was a long queue, so we took photos outside instead of waiting and actually going in.

We then slept for a few hours back at the hotel as we only had about 4 hours sleep the previous night - we were out driving James up to Tampere until midnight.

Charlotte had been in contact with some other new UVA students that she will be going to university with, and they arrived in Amsterdam yesterday too. We met up with them for the evening and went out for the evening, and doing more exploring.

This morning we woke up to rain and another thunderstorm. We were planning to go to The Hague, where Charlotte and Milja visited in January, but as it is wet again, we will stay in Amsterdam and try some museums, specifically the Van Gogh museum.

Packing again

This morning we have been packing again. We are off to Amsterdam early tomorrow morning, after driving James up to Tampere this evening for him to fly back to England.

We have have had a busy week doing lots of different things here in Helsinki. We visited Linnanmäki, the amusement park yesterday, and still had a brilliant time even though it rained heavily nearly all the time we were there. We saw Honka win 2-0 on Sunday, visited four museums, met with Janne and John last night, been shopping and spent time with the triplets and Laura. James and Charlotte have enjoyed themselves, and we are glad that we are going to be able to see James in 5 days again, once we get to England.

Amsterdam promises to be a great experience. I've never been there before, but Milja and Charlotte both visited The Hague in January.

I've put some photos up from the past weeks. Here is one of my favourites.

Out and about in the city I love the most

Yesterday we all went out for a wander around Helsinki, to visit Kiasma and see some sights. The weather was lovely and warm and sunny.

Below Helsinki Cathedral

More photos on Zooomr.