Russian Icon Tour, Part 22 Photos

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Russian Icon Tour, Part 21 Photos

Russian Icon Tour, Part 20 JFK to SAN

The Russia icon tour is finally coming to an end. 

Our flight from Helsinki to JFK landed on time and taxied over to our gate. Only 2-3 minutes delay, and we were trudging off the plane and beginning the long march towards immigration. 

A novel treat awaited us - a lurid Express Connection packet containing boarding passes. With it in hand, we were bundled along, past ropes, around the maddening crowds and over to the  Global Entry passport-reading machine. 

The usual grim-faced agent checked the passports (again); collected our Global Entry tickets; we went on to baggage claim. Another 10 minutes, our bags arrived, and we declared ourselves GREEN LANE/nothing to declare. Then we rechecked the bags, went up 2 floors in the terminal and into another round of checks: Passport. X-Rays. Boarding pass. 

Is this ridiculously complex and infuriating? Yes, of course it is. 

We barely got to the gate on time. Everyone else had boarded the flight, we thought. But no, we were in time to join a huge queue in the jetway. 

A guy behind us said the crowds were due to no one being willing to fly yesterday. I asked "Why?" and got scolded for not knowing yesterday was 9-11 or realizing that I was in New York City. Oops. I don't even know what planet I'm on. 

So we're now 2 hours into a 5-hour flight.  Laurie is sleeping and I'm listening to the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. 

My right fore-finger (my Blogger finger) is calloused from three weeks using my iPhone 6 for everything. I've been looking at all the photos I've taken with my phone - I have no idea how many I took with the big camera - 1500-2000?

What a long strange trip it's been. And a great immersion experience into the world of Russian Orthodox spirituality. 

Stay tuned to this channel to learn how you can see some good pictures of the trip. 

Mike & Laurie

Russian Icon Tour, Part 19 Helsinki

I've decided this report will have 20 parts, because I like even numbers. So this post, number 19, will cover only our Helsinki departure. 

Even though we left at 2 pm, it was a busy half-day. We did the usual frantic packing job, went down to a massive, all-a-Finn-can-eat buffet breakfast, then set out for an hour's entertainment. 

Imagine this - we found an icon shop! Only 3 block from the hotel, in business 35 years, hundreds of icons in stock. And the proprietor described himself as having one foot in the Lutheran Church and one in the Orthodox. 

He also sells religious and general art from Finnish and Russian artists. 

After an entertaining hour in this shop we ambled back to the hotel, catching sight of a small used bookstore whose window was filled with icon books. 

I was planning to call an Uber car, but Laurie preferred to take the airport bus. She won. We hoofed it 750 meters to the station and caught the Finnair bus. €6.30 per person. 

The Finnair lounge was very nice and we enjoyed lunch 

and a celebratory glass of champagne before boarding our Airbus A-330. 

The flight was the usual grim coach affair of tightly packed seats, constant coughing and sneezing plus miserable food selections. Sorry, but it was terrible. The crew was friendly though, and we were on time in NY, so 2 stars for that. 

And now we are gliding into JFK and will soon be down on American soil. 

Russian Icon Tour, Part 18 Helsinki, Finland

Gosh, I'm tired. 

Today we packed up and had breakfast in our kitchenette. 

Then we checked out and called an über car for a ride to the ferry terminal. With some time to kill, we hiked to the top of a Mayan Temple (or something!)

We watched for our fast Cat to arrive. 

The 45-mile trip across the Gulf of Finland was smooth and very fast. 

We ordered a sandwich and hamburger, not knowing the Finns prefer their burgers big and messy! Oh my - two patties of a meat-like substance, bacon, fried egg, pickles, lettuce and tomatoes, huge bun and fries. 

Groaning, we landed in a busy harbor overlooked by several large churches. We visited the Orthodox Cathedral.

We were a bit disappointed inside. The icons were modern style and seemed to be painted on canvas. It was grand, but cold. 

Exhausted from dragging our bags on cobblestones, we called another car and rode in style - Citroën C5 - to our hotel. The chatty driver was born in Italy, is now a naturalized U.S. Citizen who married a Brazilian woman, and their child was born in Finland. They're waiting for the U.S. economy to improve before moving back to Florida. Or Brazil. The Global Citizen, indeed. 

After checking into a luxurious Western hotel room, 

we went right back out to beat the 5 pm closing time of some local attractions. 

The Church in the Rock is unique. Stark doesn't begin to describe it. A big hole in a rock with piano on stage, and incidentally an organ and pulpit. 

A homeless gent inside provoked the staff to the point they called the police, so we all went outside to wait and watch to see what would happen... but nothing happened. 

Rather than go out to eat, we decided to have a picnic in our room to eat up all our left-over snacks - beer, venison sausage, smoked cheese, olives, sardines, tortilla chips, bread, fruit from a hotel gift platter, brownies, etc. 

We check at noon tomorrow at Finnair and we'll be on the way home!  Yay!

PS - the only hotel of our trip with free and convenient ICE right at our room!

Of course, it's the only hotel where we dared drink tap water...

Russian Icon Tour Part 17 Tallinn

This morning we squandered an hour booking hotel and ferry to Helsinki.  We spent another hour swapping some just-purchased heavy items for light ones, and swapping our rubles for euro. Now we have less weight to carry, and more cash to spend. 

Finally, we began our daily 10k walkabout. 

We saw Old Town, parks, 2 churches, a few stores, etc. and we shuffled around a big shopping mall too. 

We've seen lots of interesting homes and small blocks of flats, just in our neighborhood. 

It was quiet and peaceful here in our $50/night studio, until a tractor showed up around noon. Here's a look at our neighborhood now under siege. 

Ours is the darker brown building. 

They are digging up the driveway across the street, while the longest-armed window washer ever! is working on the other side of our place.  

This well fenced building is the British Embassy in Estonia. I'm not going to provoke the guards by getting a close shot of the front entrance. 

Here are other photos of buildings within a 2-block radius of our place:

We are here. 

Soon we will be heading to a private  house, for a BBQ and to look at another icon collector's collection.