Engel's cathedral above Senate Square: who actually built it, the two name changes, the grey repaint of 2025, and the fact that it now charges admission.
The UNESCO sea fortress at the harbour mouth: the three names, the 1808 surrender, the Anglo-French bombardment of 1855, the ferries, and which museums shut for winter.
Nuuksio National Park is in Espoo, not Helsinki. Getting there by train and bus, the Haltia nature centre, everyman's rights in a national park, and ticks.
Taking a child under 16 out of the United Kingdom without the consent of everyone with parental responsibility is a criminal offence, and the official summary of the exception says 28 days where both governing Acts say less than one month. London's New Year fireworks bar pushchairs from the viewing areas, and Edinburgh's Street Party admits no one under 12.
A serious European collection in the quietest major museum in the city, a three-quarter-scale copy of a Paris palace, built over the city's old potter's field — seven hundred bodies were uncovered during the 1993 excavation.
Three aquariums, and they are not equivalent: the Steinhart is in Golden Gate Park and not downtown, the Pier 39 aquarium lost its accreditation in 2024, and Monterey is a two-hour drive away.
The Exploratorium left the Palace of Fine Arts for Pier 15 in 2013, the Academy of Sciences was rebuilt in Golden Gate Park in 2008, and the zoo now comes with caveats worth stating.
The Summer of Love lasted one summer, and the Diggers staged its funeral in October 1967. The counterculture addresses still stand, but the free clinic closed in 2019 and the Red Victorian is empty — and the real reason it all happened here is the cheap subdividable Victorians.
The square is older and stranger than it looks — a Civil War name, a Victory modelled on the founder of the Legion of Honor, and lawns laid on the roof of the world's first underground car park — plus an honest account of what has happened to the shops.