Finland

 Tom's happy.

We were only in Helsinki twenty four hours and quite a lot of that time we were asleep. But we discovered some Finnish facts. They make a mean hamburger, they speak astonishingly good English, they have first rate designers and it's bloody cold.

We weren't quite sure why there were such a lot of statues of naked people.

The autumn leaves were gorgeous. The temperature was four degrees so we didn't spend a long time admiring the leaves. Instead we headed for anything warm.

This church on the edge of the waterfront suited us.

Even if it hadn't been so cold outside, we would have appreciated the pretty ceiling.

Tom forgot about his dislike of churches and started snapping away.

We couldn't stay in the church all day so we went down to the water and bought some souvenirs in the market place.

Did I mention design? The Finns have a quirky sensibility. These shoes were outrageously expensive.

And then we sought for warmth again. The Kiasma gallery of modern art was warm and interesting.

Inside there were the normal exhibitions plus Mona Hatoum's first solo exhibition in Finland. She was born in Beirut and her work examines conflict and contradictions.

I'm not sure where the conflict is in the work below but I think there are some contradictions between the woven hair and the scrap of paper.

The one below took my fancy.

And the giant graters were fun.

Part of the general exhibitions was this olifactory experience. There were about fifty vases filled with different smelling oils. Some of them were lovely like roses or lavender and some were horrid like stale tobacco smoke. And then in the centre the artist combined all the smells and called it Babel. Too much. It was an interesting concept. And then out into the cold once more and back to our hotel. We had checked out but we were allowed to use the sauna and showers so we were squeaky clean and relaxed by the time we caught a taxi to the airport.

This was the lavender. But below was my favourite part of the gallery. We walked into a little room and sat and watched two videos that ran for about twenty minutes. The first one focused on a young boy whose mother was dying of cancer in Mynama and the second was a meeting between a Filipino man on an arctic cruise ship and a man in a wheelchair. They connect as we watch whales and penguins and icebergs. The boy and his love for his mother and the chance connection between two unlikely men was both poignant and life affirming.

And now we fly back to Hong Kong on the last leg of our journey.