Castles are fun, boats are not

Hi Everyone,
It's morning here, and I would have loved to have posted last night, I promise I will explain below.

For my last day in Helsinki, I took a train to Hame Castle, one of Finland's few surviving medieval castles. Harold's pretty excited because we have a window seat.  The countryside is pretty.

I'm sad that the central courtyard was closed, but I had fun exploring the castle.

The banquet hall is still used today, making it the oldest in Finland.

I even tried on some armour! The things I do for your entertainment friends.

From there I took the train back to Helsinki, and picked up my luggage at the hostel, then took the tram to the ferry dock.  Helsinki has been a very walkable city, and riding the tram system has helped my to finally figure out riding the bus, so maybe I'll use the bus more often in some of my upcoming cities. The only confusing thing about Helsinki is that every street and tram station has two names, one in Finish, and one in Swedish. It's been a bit challenging because sometimes Google gives me the Finnish name, and sometimes it gives me the Swedish name for the tram stops. I will admit the Swedish names are easier for an English speaker to pronounce.

So I thought the overnight ferry would be relaxing.

I was wrong.

I got settled into my tiny, but perfect sized for Me and Harold room.  I connected to the WiFi and posted the earlier blog post, and then decided to explore the ship a bit.  There is a restaurant deck, and a shopping deck, a sun deck, and even a kids area where Harold played in the ball pit, and made friends with a 7 year old Finish girl.

I headed back to my room because I was starting to have trouble walking on the ship since it was moving more.  I napped for a bit, and then had to take a shower, in a moving bathroom. Yikes!  I gave up on trying to blog, or do anything really. I struggled to sleep all night because the ship kept rolling, a bit more than I was expecting. Waves would crash loudly against the side of the ship and wake me up. It reminded me of the loud thunder we had during the monsoon storm a couple of weeks ago.  I'm not sure if that is normal or if we had a storm last night; it was windy and starting to rain as I arrived at the ferry dock. I'm happy my room is close to the exit because I'm looking forward to getting off the boat.  I'm regretting that I have to do this again in about a week to get to Oslo. At least now I know to shower before the ship leaves port!