Back in Helsinki

After a two hour train ride to Helsinki, I found myself again at the central train station, or Rautatientori, which I think means train station, or at least that's the name of the train station's metro stop. The city was somewhat familiar from my last visit, but I had to walk around a bit to find the rather impressive building seen above. I had thought it was some palatial building, but I believe it's actually a cathedral.

After my quick reorienting walking tour I once again went in search of St. Urho's Pub (next to Storyville) and St. Urho's Plate (the same menu selection I had last time; guess I'm a creature of habit). The dish is a basic steak and fries but it comes with a fried egg on top and two sausage links. Since I had missed breakfast and lunch, this really hit the spot. I got there by tram this time as it is a bit of a walk. I don't mind using the local public transportation (it's generally pretty good in Europe), but it can take me a little while to figure out how it works. Here it looks like you get a ticket that's good for an hour, but it's good for both metro and trams. Figuring out where the trams go was a bit tricky at first since I was trying to mainly use colors to match up the lines and their destinations, but it's easier once you follow the tram line to its endpoint on the map and then read the tram line number that's printed in large font. The line colors are a bit too similar to make distinguishing them easier, but it wasn't obvious to me how to match up the graphical line and the line number. I asked someone and they pointed that out, which immediately made tram navigation easy. In both cases of tram and metro, however, I managed to get on the wrong one, and had to get off and backtrack a bit. But now that I've clued in a bit, I should be able to get around Helsinki faster the next time I'm here. I think I can now manage to get around a few of the European cities with good tram and metro service, e.g., Zurich, Warsaw, and Helsinki are all somewhat similar in this respect.