I may have had bad luck in St Petersburg, but now that I'm in Helsinki, things are starting to look up. In fact, my timing couldn't have been more perfect. After a short, comfortable flight on Finnair on Saturday, I arrived in Helsinki to discover that the Leningrad Cowboys, Finland's most famous musical export, was performing for just one night together with the Red Army Choir, and were playing a free live outdoor concert, the Global Balalaika Show, for the Helsinki Festival.

That night, two friends and I joined 100,000 other concert-goers, one-sixth of the population of the entire city, for the most surreal, bemusing and enjoyable live show that I have seen in many years. Onstage, the long-coiffed, pointy-shoed Cowboys were accompanied by more than 140 guest performers including Angelique Kidjo, Isaac Hayes and numerous scantily-clad samba dancers, Russian cossack dancers, stilt walkers, and ostrich feather-adorned performers for an uplifting set of familiar tunes (can you imagine Leningrad Cowboys performing The Damned's Eloise?...neither could I, but it worked!) and high camp entertainment.

Unfortunately I was too far from the main stage to see (or photograph) any details, but I was able to watch the show on the large video screens on either side. I attempted to capture the people around me who were also enjoying the show, with less than ideal results in this latest Typepad gallery, but you still get the sense of a vastly colourful performance, set in a beautiful historic public square with impressive old European civic architecture.

Today's second gallery concludes my photos from St Petersburg and contains several views of the breathtaking Church of Spilled Blood. Finally, my Mirror Project submission from St Petersburg is now online. With palaces overflowing with sumptuous baroque gilded interiors and hundreds of mirrors, it was almost impossible to choose the best one for a self-portrait. This image, believe it or not, is from one of the more restrained rooms, the Ball Room, at Tsarskoe Selo (Catherine the Great's country retreat).