I have the evening to acclimatize before starting my programme of visits tomorrow so I thought I’d take the chance to do a little bit of exploring. Its a very strange feeling, being here, alone, in a strange city, and it suddenly struck me as I looked at bus and train timetables whilst finding out how to get to the schools I’m visiting, that this is all a little scary. It’s a long time since I did something like this on my own, so I thought perhaps I should get some practice in. Off I went, guide book in hand, bought a ticket from the machine and jumped on a tram. It’s supposed to be a great way of seeing Helsinki….and it was. The guide book tells you how you can save 25 Euros by doing the 3T tram circular route rather than the official bus tour, as this tram passes all the sights and landmarks. And the book was correct. I had a great hour or so scooting around the city taking in all the tourist sights. The Finns are really friendly, a couple of them taking the time to point out things of interest as the tram trundled around the city. Its a beautiful one as well, very clean with loads of open spaces, wide streets, and hardly any high-rise buildings. You can see the sky all of the time.

Having developed the mother of all colds over the weekend, I got off the tram by a pharmacy to get some medicine, and then I spotted it – McDonalds ! in fact there are shedloads of them here, and I just couldn’t resist I’m afraid. One meal-deal later and I’m back on the tourist trail, and just to prove I’m not a total philistine, here is a photo of the national Museum…

In the morning, I’m off to visit an upper secondary school in Sipoo, a town about 30 KM to the east of Helsinki that specialises in using ICT to enhance teaching and learning in all of the subject curricula. It will be really interesting to see how they managed to get to this stage, and compare this to the situation in Scottish secondary schools.