My goodness how time has flown! It’s been two weeks since I last wrote on the blog. This spring has turned out to be super busy and now it’s almost June! I can’t believe it. I want to savour every moment of summer before the long winter kicks in again.
There’s been a lot going on these past two weeks with many favourites and quite a few non-favourites as well! Since my last post, it was Mother’s Day on the Sunday. The family made me a lovely breakfast and then my mom came over and we had a bit of a bbq. It was chilly at first but then warmed up and we were able to sit outside. My mom wanted to buy some flowers for her balcony so we went to see the assortment they had at Plantagen. I also decided to get some geraniums but have to say that the quality wasn’t very good and I’ve definitely had better ones before.
On the following week, Leppävaara’s outdoor swimming pool finally opened! YAY! Last year I was just as excited and bought a 25-time entrance ticket but ended up going only twice as my car broke down and it took months to repair. Unfortunately the ticket wasn’t valid anymore and I had to buy a new one. Thank goodness I still had the possibility of getting a cheaper student ticket so it wasn’t such a huge loss.
One of my colleagues at work had enticed me and another colleague to get some reduced-price tickets for the Cirque du Soleil show in Helsinki – the Avatar inspired Toruk – The First Flight. To our huge dissapointment, the show was not what we were expecting. The projections were cool but there was not much acrobatics – mostly the characters just ran and jumped around on stage. For the price of the tickets, I would have expected more. It is a pity that I had not read any reviews before buying the tickets because they resonated with our experience. Has anyone else seen the show?
On the next day, I had a lovely meet-up with fellow blogger Snow! I was quite nervous because Snow blogs anonymously and I had no idea what she looks like. Thankfully, she recognized me and we had coffee at the Robert’s Coffee Jugend which is quite grand inside. However, as it was still warm outside we opted for a table in the sun and had some sandwiches and ice cream. While I was getting my snacks inside, a seagull pooped on Snow’s bag! Or perhaps it was ice cream from a nearby passer-by. Nevertheless, whatever it was, it was an unfortunate event as it messed up her bag.
At the end of the week, I had our outdoor furniture delivery coming up. I was really looking forward to finally getting them as we’d ordered them in the beginning of April. Sadly, they had somehow misplaced half of the delivery. It’s been a long process trying to get the company to locate the missing pieces. You would imagine they would do the work without you having to call them all the time to remind them! Fortunately, a whole week after, the furniture has been found and should be delivered in a few days.
My friend Niina asked me to try a brunch at a cafe run by her friend in Helsinki on Saturday. The name of the café is cute – Bean There. It’s a vegan friendly place with lots of Middle Eastern inspired dishes. We ate our bellies full and enjoyed catching up. After, we went our own ways but in the afternoon, we met again! This time at my FIL’s house to plant some summer flowers for him.
This week my Icelandic friend Elisabet came to Helsinki for a meeting and we met up for dinner at Söder. Before seeing her, I went to the Helsinki City Museum where I haven’t been for ages. What’s great about the museum is that it’s free for everyone. There’s a children’s museum attached to it but since I didn’t have any kids with me, I gave that a miss and concentrated on the other exhibits. I really enjoyed their Helsinki Bites exhibit where you can get acquainted with the history of Helsinki. ❤
Söder was a cosy place but quite noisy. I wish restaurants looked more into their “sound world” to make the atmosphere more comfortable. It’s no fun having to shout all the time! Söder has a quirky concept as they only have starters and desserts. The dishes have been made to share. We ordered almost the whole menu and lucky for us, when I didn’t like something, my companion did and vice versa. But in the end, you could say that not all the dishes were a success. After, we went for drinks at Goldfish. First, we entered the bar and I found myself quite puzzled, as Goldfish advertises that it’s the classiest cocktail bar in Helsinki, and this place definitely did not look classy! Thankfully I realized we were in the wrong place before we had ordered anything. We then walked on a bit more and found Goldfish after asking where it was from a nearby restaurant. Goldfish was elegant and reminded me of some of the cool cocktail bars I’ve been to in Tallinn. Great to have a place like that in Helsinki! I had a cocktail that tasted of raspberries and liquorice. Delicious but perhaps an acquired taste.
There’s been a lot of activity on our boat these past two weeks, especially on weekends, washing and waxing. Hopefully we will soon be ready to lower the boat into the water. After that we still have to “move” all the stuff that we took out in the Fall back in and sort out the sails. A never-ending story it seems! Also, I have a zillion painting projects going in our yard, so it seems that these chores are simply always ongoing which is a bit overwhelming.
Today my friend Laura invited Lilli and I for a lunch at their local church. The lunch was free but you could donate to Finn Church Aid if you wished. A great idea – they raised almost 800 euros with this event! It seemed that the church has quite an active community as all the tables were full and lunch was very busy. What I liked about the event was that there were people of all ages there and you are welcome whatever your religious beliefs are (or are not). We had planned to go for a walk but with the rain beating down, we had to forget about that.
This Sunday is very eventful. It’s the last day to vote for the European Parliament Elections, Formula 1 is on (the Finnish driver Bottas has been quite successful this season) and Finland will be battling with Canada in the evening for the 2019 Ice Hockey World Championships! Are you following any of these?
I listened to a great book once again – Before we were yours by Lisa Wingate. It is based on the real-life story of an adoption scandal in Memphis. In this book, you follow two storylines – one of Rill who was in the midst of it all with her siblings and another present day storyline of Avery who finds out there’s a mystery related to her family and has an urge to investigate. The book is food for thought because even though people will think “this happened ages ago”, the truth is that the world is not free of people profiting from the business of adoption. If you have read this book, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
How are you and what have you been up to? Happy upcoming week y’all!
As I haven’t really taken many photos during the past two weeks, all these photos are from Loviisa which we visited on our sailing trip in 2017.
xx
The Life and Travels of Mrs Suvi 
Sounds like Toruk is just a bad show. So disappointing!! I’ve seen a few boring Cirque shows but nothing that bad. The closest was La Reve, which was created by a former Cirque executive and can be summed up as, “there are some more people diving into water.” I’ve met people who loved it but I thought it was horrible,
On the other hand, I just saw Amaluna 3x in 10 days because it was so spectacular… great costumes, great acts, great music…. everything!! The first night I attended, the basquit team had 2 falls when attempting to stack 4 acrobats… and from my front-row seat I could see that at least 2 performers were pretty freaked out (but went for the 3rd, successful, attempt anyway). That stunt was not performed the next 2 times that I went.
Thanks for sharing all the lovely pics!!
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Wow sounds like you really enjoyed the show! Yikes with that stunt going wrong, what a nightmare for the performers 😱 Thanks for letting me know your experiences!
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My goodness, you keep busy! I like that you find different restaurants to try; I feel like I never get out, so I can live vicariously through your posts. 😉 I kept hearing loud cheers over the weekend and didn’t realize it was for the hockey games! YAY Finland!!
Oh, the City Museum. That’s where I first went for mommy meet ups and I didn’t realize just how big it actually was until Little Man started climbing the stairs and riding the elevators. It’s really an excellent museum, and for free!
I would love, love, love to read Before We Were Yours. I remember hearing about it when it was first published. Perhaps I’ll add it to my summer reading list. Do you know if I can find it here in English? (Otherwise, Amazon is always an option.) If you like that book, I think you would really enjoy “Orphan Train” by Christina Baker Kline. It also has the double plot lines of past and present and tells about the orphan train from the east coast of the US to the Midwest. It’s fascinating, heartbreaking, and hopeful.
Have a lovely week, Suvi!
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Well, now that all weekends are reserved for my various painting projects in our yard or the boat, I try to do a lot of stuff during the week! 🙂 Oh, I can imagine City Museum being great for meet ups, I was eyeing the sofas downstairs when I went there, looked comfy. I only do Kindle and Audible, so I never buy actual books, but it looks like Akateeminen stocks it and has it in Tampere and Turku, so you should ask them in Helsinki to order it for you. I’ve read Orphan Train and really enjoyed it, gave it five stars even! Wishing you a great week with lots of sunshine! xx
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Yeahh, you met! Good luck dripping, that’s what it was. 😀 Great photos!
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I love blogger meetups! This time I was very curious too as I got to meet the real-life Snow 😄
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Another busy couple of weeks. Boats take do much time to prepare but it will all be worthwhile when you eventually set sail for your holidays. So nice to read that you finally met up with Snow but a nuisance about the seagull. It’s a public holiday here today and of course it’s raining! Off for breakfast in a pub now. M x
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Yes, I do hope we get to sail this holiday, it just feels that every time something is repaired, something new comes up! Keep your fingers crossed! This year we won’t do a long trip, need some change to the summer routine 😄 For some reason your comment was in the spam folder, the way WordPress works at times baffles me! Lovely with a public holiday, we will also have Thursday off and I am taking an extra day off on Friday so will have plenty of time to work on the boat some more 😅 xx
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Well I might have to mop up some drool over the keyboard.Lol. Thanks for sharing those beautiful idyllic Finnish summer pics. I so miss that vivid green, and the colourfully painted houses. It makes me happy and a bit sad (that I live so far away from Scandinavia) at the same time. Love the “Bean there” name.
I am so pleased that you and Snow got to meet up. What fun! Pity about the seagull poop. That is supposed to be good luck, although why, I don’t know.
The weather looks great in your shots, although you mentioned rain, so perhaps the change came super fast?
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Heheh the photos do look idyllic but they are from our sailing trip in 2017 which was an absolutely nightmarish summer with constant rain! We were lucky in Loviisa for a bit thank goodness. But wooly underwear was very useful that summer. I’m sure Snow will be pleased to hear seagull poop is good luck and at least it was lucky it didn’t land on her head! We did have a super fast change to the weather, a colleague didn’t realize what was happening and came to work without a coat, regretting it when she noticed the freezing wind. After getting used to wearing shorts I’m back to wearing my light down coat!!!
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The photos belie the actual temperature, Suvi. But then I like that there are places in the world when summer isn’t all hot, humid and sticky. There are quite enough of those for my liking. But it does restrict one’s outside activities.
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fantastic post…..Suvi
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Oh my, thank you! 🙃
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Oh that darn seagull again!! 🤣🤣
Fun post Suvi! Once again, I learned about restaurants and bars I never even knew existed in Helsinki!!!😳 Goldfish sounds interesting.
I HAVE been to the city museum’s kids’ side, though, yay! The boys loved the little puppet theatre they had there.
I’ve also been to Cirque du Soleil once, it was great. But I was a bit concerned they’d shine attention on us since they seemed to be picking out lots of people randomly from the audience. I have no idea if it was rehearsed and if those people were in on it.
Maybe they’ve cut down on the acrobatics since they had a few deaths recently during shows? The show we saw had crazy, super-daring stunts and
now that I know there have been accidents I’m not sure if I’d want to see such a daring show again.
As for the book, it sounds too sad for me. Can’t read anything sad. Nope!
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Goldfish was really nice but extremely expensive, imagine paying the price of a meal for a cocktail 😱 Well, at least one can’t drink too much that way 😜 Oh goodness, I did not know that about Cirque du Soleil, now I understand the choice not to do extreme acrobatics anymore. Our show had the silliest thing, they asked everyone to download an app which then prompted you to do stuff with your phone in the midst of things. For example people’s phones lighted up in different colors. I thought it was mainly annoying and gave people permission to keep looking at their phones. I uninstalled it after a few minutes as it was ridiculous. Oh yes, the book was a bittersweet story, sad but with hope.
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It was very fun meeting up, Suvi! Lets hope some extra good luck came both our way with that poop/ice cream mess! 🤣
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Re cirque… it’s a mix, depending upon the show and activity. I just saw Amaluna (3 times in 10 days cause it was so good!) and all clown-interaction with audience members was random. But when I went to Zumanity, there were a combo of “planted” audience members, who were actually rehearsed acts, and randoms. I was pulled to stage and it was one of the highlights of my life!!
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Interesting to hear that!! And good for you if that was what you wanted (I dreaded the very thought!) How could you tell if it was random or rehearsed – apart from your own turn of course? I’ll always remember seeing U2 in the early 00’s and Bono pulled a girl to the stage, seemingly randomly, to dance with him. She acted shy and then danced awesomely. But I recognized her from my dance class actually, and that made me wonder if it wasn’t set up
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That’s just not fair to have it setup like that! Every fan wants to think they could be the special one 😄
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In Zumanity, a older couple was pulled to stage then turned out to be professional dancers.
But if the interaction is with the clowns, it’s usually random. I know, from experience, that they’re sometimes whispering instructions… but often not. I’ve seen some go very bad but many more which were hysterical.
I’m super comfy in public so when they realized that, they really played with it. I was in an orgy scene. At the end, I saw that a guy taken from the audience was still on the border of the stage with maybe 2 short buttons undone. But when the shirtless gigilo character got me laying on stage I immediately pretended to twerk his nips. Realizing I was playful, I had been rolled to center stage, made to imitate riding the gigilo character (he was ‘bucking’ under me), had the spotlight thrown on us, and the MC said “Girrrll, I am afraid of you!!”
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After the show, tons of people asked if I had been a plant nut nope… just dumb luck cause the original choice, some hot chick, refused to go up.
Only bad part was that I was in Vegas alone… no friends to witness one of my dreams come true (working with Cirque).
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