What a difference a day makes.  I have heard that phrase many times in my life.   Give something a little bit of time…. and it will change.

This could apply to just about anything.   Change is inevitable in our lives.  Whether it is the weather, or a personal challenge.  Perhaps a relationship…..  or maybe, even….. a geographical location.  Ahhh.  Yes.  Location, location, location.

I’ll tell you what.   Hop on a big boat one day… get off in another city the next day… and things change.  I say that with…. a great, and sincere emphasis.

So there we were in magical St. Petersburg yesterday.   And today, Helsinki.

On our bus ride from the boat to the town…. a few people said… “It will be very hard to top St. Petersburg.”  And I responded…. “Helsinki will be every bit as spectacular… just in its own unique way.  It will simply be different.”

Well… I was right about it about it being unique, and different.  Maybe even spectacular.  But not necessarily in a “sparkly…. skip-in-your-step”  way.

We saw a church made of rocks… sort of. (Okay…. we walked by it twice.  THAT was something!)  Laurie bought a hand towel…. with big dots on it.  We looked at the train station, and we went into a department store.  And… uhhhnnnn… we uhhhh… caught an early shuttle back to the boat.

It was completely different here.  The city seemed oppressed to me.  It was dark, and the streets were a little dirty.  There was construction everywhere.  Or maybe just the looks of things being torn apart and put back together again.

The people seemed nice.  But they were slower.  There were a lot more people just sitting around.  And meandering.  Like they were waiting for something… or anything.

In St. Petersburg there was a buzz.   A bustle.  A movement everywhere… and in every direction.  In Helsinki… there was a shuffle.  A crawl.  Maybe even… a big unspoken secret.

Yet. I am glad I came here.  I am certain I have not seen “the spectacular”  of this place.  But I have a feeling it is here.   And maybe that is the secret.  Maybe the people of this place…. drape the town in a big gray blanket when the cruise ships pull in to port…. with all the frenzied tourists…. scooping up I love Finland trinkets… with elbows flying and cameras popping.

And when we leave… the town can breathe again.  And get back to being its own place.  Just give something a little bit of time… and it will certainly change.

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“The doors we open and close each day decide the lives we live.”  –   Flora Whittemore
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“For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.”  –  Ralph Waldo Emerson
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“What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.”  –  Pericles

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