Helsinki, Finland, Day 3 - Tennispalatsi

9am Woke up, had breakfast which was pretty much the same as the day before.  Today we were going to watch the final Batman movie, "The Dark Knight Rises" at Tennispalatsi.  And have some good food as well.  That was pretty much the plan.  I didn't take many photos today.

11:30am or so, we checked out and placed our luggage in the holding area.  Then we walked to the forum shopping building which has the Moomin shop on the second floor.  Here's the entrance to the building.


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The Moomins are characters created by a Swedish-Finn named Tove Jansson.  They are a family of trolls but look like hippopotamuses.  They're a famous export of the country, and even have a theme park called Moomin world in Finland.

At 12pm or so we walked to Tennispalatsi and picked up the tickets, I had reserved them earlier.

There's several of these located around the city, form and function, celebrating 200 years of Helsinki as a design capital.

Tennispalatsi building

After picking up the tickets we had lunch at a stall named Picnic which is next to Singapore Hot Wok, we were there the day before as well.  Lunch was salad and some bread.  And juice, I had the juice the same as the day before as well.

Ham slices, olives, what's the name of this salad, I have to find out..

Chicken salad with soy sauce, lettuce, beans, rock melon and sesame seed dressing

2pm Walked to the cinema.  The movie's start time was at 2:15pm.  Of course we had a toilet break before, and here's when something silly happened.  The toilet doors were locked with a pin code, and the pin code was on the ticket which I didn't have with me, so I had to get them.  That's just ridiculous.  Also the men and women's signs for the toilet were almost similar!  Except the women sign for the toilet had a "smaller waist".  No kidding.  A common design principle.  Don't change toilet signs that everyone understands, a female toilet sign usually has a triangle around the waist denoting a skirt!  But nope, this one had a smaller waist, with no skirt!!  So I entered the toilet and when I came out I saw some women and thought, oh this must be a unisex toilet, but then after observing a while I realised I had entered the incorrect one, and it wasn't just me who thought the same thing.  My girlfriend thinks the same as well.  And it's just simply ridiculous to have a pin code on the ticket just for the toilet!

Here's my cinema ticket, with toilet pin code (4362).

5pm Movie ended, and that brings an end to the Christopher Nolan line of Batman movies.  Was it a good movie?  Yes I guess.  Were there hidden meanings in the movie?  Of course there were but that's a different topic of discussion altogether.  Dinner was at a restaurant close to Kamppi called "Tang Dynasty Kamppi" which served Thai, Chinese and Japanese food.  We picked the buffett option which was 15 Euros per person.  It was alright, I mainly had sushi and plenty of vegetables.

At 6pm we headed back to the hotel to pick up our luggage and then we caught the 6:30pm bus to the airport.  There was a real fiasko going on the bus, a passenger tried to bring his bike onto the bus and this was not allowed.  The passenger, and old man with the bike, eventually got off but not before having a real go at the bus driver, plenty of yelling and shouting going on and causing a real scene.  We arrived at the airport about 7pm.  There weren't many people at the Terminal that was I was, Terminal 1.

Terminal 1 airport check in.

My flight to Copenhagen was at 9:15pm, and I went through customs at 8pm or so.  Took a walk to Terminal 2, bought these Karl Fazer chocolates and 2 packs angry birds.

Lingonberry chocolates, nom nom.  Also got some blueberry ones.

The cheapest angry birds are at the Stockmann store.  To anyone who wants to buy them.  And the chocolates as well.  There's an angry birds store in terminal 2 selling just angry birds merchandise but almost none of the stuff is made in Finland.  They had a really cool woollen iPad cover which I've never seen elsewhere that's supposedly made in Finland, and that was my only source of temptation from the shop.  Who knows I might pay it a visit again the next time I'm there.

I didn't get called over the speaker system this time and made it to my flight on time.  In Copenhagen nothing much really happened, I had to wait an hour after landing and then caught the flight at 10:45pm which took me into Oslo at 11:45pm.  Of course the trains weren't running tonight either because of construction works so I had to catch the bus and didn't get home till 1:30am Monday morning.  All in all it was a very packed weekend.