Though I love to walk/run around the small bay near my house (Töölönlahti), I hadn't spent much time walking around the actual seashore yet. And of course, Helsinki is surrounded by water:
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Plenty of paths cross the seashore for Helsinki residents to use during the warmer months (or for the hardier of residents to use all year round, if they have spikes on their shoes to dig into the inevitable ice). The first stop on the seashore tour: the Sibelius monument.
Jean Sibelius is the best-known Finnish composer, with his name gracing pretty much anything that is both Finnish and music-related. His monument, below, caused some controversy.
Some people apparently felt that the monument did not clearly convey Sibelius' genius, or perhaps at the very least, that the set of organ pipes was actually a monument to a man. They commissioned the artist to create a mask of his face to sit alongside the monument to clarify the matter for all those unused to seeing monuments to people that were not actually pictures of those people. Though I am from the Washington DC area, it has never occurred to me to check if there is a similar little statue of Washington sitting alongside his monument, which doesn't really resemble him as a person either.
That was pretty much it for the monuments on the seashore, but there was plenty more beauty to be seen.
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