When the sun is setting, between dusk and darkness, there is a moment when the light turns blue. And the world stops for a heartbeat.
With my siblings, good food, good drinks, and escape rooms tend to go hand in hand. That didn’t leave much time for any other sightseeing. With stormy, rainy weather, it hardly felt like a loss.
In between showers, I managed a few quick pictures around town and a short visit to Fotografiska – still my favourite photo museum in the city.
Tallinn is just a 2 hour ferry ride from Helsinki, which makes it a perfect weekend get-away with Stuart, my brother, sister, and brother-in-law.
Tallinn is an old Hansa city and the old town is just beautiful. As a tourist, one rarely wonders outside of the old town. However, one purpose for the trip was to solve a number of escape rooms – none of which are in the old town.
One down, three to go. And we got to see some of the modern Tallinn too.
You could assume, that after the long and dark winter, the spring inspires me to post a lot of images of flowers. You would be wrong, though. I posted a lot of images of flowers even in South Africa. The truth is that they are picturesque and they are there.
The do still inspire me.
Daffodils have always been my favorite flowers. The close second (depending on the mood) are sunflowers. Both are just so unashamedly happy.
At the moment, the sun rises in Helsinki at 6am. In just a week, it will be 20 minutes earlier. The change is so fast, you can really feel it – and Finns are almost unrecognizable from the dark, crumpy winter dwellers of just a few weeks ago.
Getting to the office early feels decidedly more humane when you are accompanied with blue sky and the first rays of sunshine.
Last year Santa brought the girls a trampoline. I was a bit worried it wouldn’t be used much, but I didn’t need to worry. Last summer, there was barely a day that girls didn’t go jumping, at least for a bit. Most days, there would be several friends bouncing with them.
We set the trampoline up again today (you have to take it into storage for winter). Thirty minutes later, you could already hear the laughter of four little girls.
Raking is pretty far down the list of my favourite things to do. But there is some satisfaction in having a tidy yard. At least it has been dry, which makes raking easy. Keeping girls at task was harder.
Helsinki city centre has a number of cool jugend style houses, several really nice statues, and some that are just a bit weird.
The sea is finally free of ice, although not many boats have braved the cold waters yet.
With sun reflecting from the beautiful calm waters, I occassionally wonder if we shoild get a boat of our own.
Luckily these moments of insanity do not last long.
Despite my grumpiness about the spring and rain… summer is coming.
Blue Moment 