The travels of Tim and Megan: Helsinki, Finland

Friday

After arriving at Hotel Finn in the centre of Helsinki just before midnight on Thursday night, we had a sleep in before we got going on Friday morning. We found breakfast in a cafe on the 4th floor of a huge department store called Stockmann. The department store was amazing and breakfast was quite delicious too!

Finland is a Nordic country, bordered by Sweden to the west, Norway in the north, Russia to the east, while Estonia lies across the Gulf of Finland to the south. Finland has a population of around 5.5 million, most of whom live in the southern part of the country. It is the 8th largest country in Europe in terms of area and it is also the most sparsely populated country in the European Union. Apparently Finland has over 188,000 lakes! Woah. Helsinki is the largest and capital city, with a population approaching 600,000, although around 1.1 million people live within the wider metropolitan area.

After breakfast we wandered through the pretty streets of Helsinki. We certainly noticed a temperature difference between Romania and Finland. Helsinki's position on the globe is about equivalent to the Shetland Islands, comfortably north of mainland Scotland! We had been told that Helsinki was not the most attractive place to visit, but we thought it was actually quite nice. We walked down Pohjoisesplanadi (the esplanade), which has a strip of park/gardens full of statues and fountains running down the centre. This took us down to the waterfront where we visited the market. There were some really cool things for sale at the market. Tim bought Megan some birthday ear-rings made from silver and a stone called spectrolite, which is apparently only found in Finland.

We then carried on around the waterfront and checked out the Uspenski Cathedral, an Eastern Orthodox cathedral, which was beautifully decorated inside. From there, we made our way to Senate Square, the city's main square. The Senate Square presents four of Carl Ludvig Engel's architectural gems representing the political, religious, scientific and commercial powers of Helsinki. The Helsinki Cathedral is the largest of the buildings and it dominates the square. It was completed in 1852. Very impressive on the outside, but a little plain on the inside! The Palace of the Council State is on the eastern side of the square. This originally served as the seat of the Senate of Finland, but now houses the offices of the Prime Minister and cabinet. The main university building and the national library also decorate the square. In the centre of the square is an impressive statue of Alexander II. The Seanate Square now hosts all sorts of festivals and concerts and while we there, it was full of a wide range of Chevrolet cars, celebrating the 100th anniversary of Chevrolet.

We found a great little cafe/chocolate shop just near the square, where we had some delicious chocolates and a cup of hot chocolate. When we came out of the cafe again, the thick grey cloud had almost completely cleared away, leaving a beautiful sunny blue sky and it was quite hot. This made for some good photo-taking conditions! Megan acquired a helium balloon from the good folks of Chevrolet, which she carried around for most of the afternoon. It was her birthday after all!

We had a late lunch at Bakers Bar and Restaurant, just across the road from our hotel before we carried on exploring the city centre. We thought about going to a traditional Finnish sauna, which are apparently really good, but this would have involved getting a tram across the city in rush hour, so we decided to just walk the streets instead. The blocks in the city centre are each named after an animal and they have little animal symbols above the street signs, which we quite enjoyed.

It was a lovely evening and we had a couple of drinks before heading out for dinner to a place called Ravintola Juuri (or something similar). It was amazing food - they do "sapas", like tapas but a Finnish equivalent. Megan sampled a few different sapas and Tim had wild boar and then we shared chocolate cake for dessert. So good.

Saturday

We slept in again, which was necessary after some rude drunk people woke us (and the rest of the hotel) up at 4am, shouting down the corridors. Not impressed. After checking out of the hotel, we had a good solid breakfast at the Helsinki World Trade Centre, and then went next door to the Ateneum Art Gallery, where there was an exhibition on the magic of Lapland. There were photos, paintings, sculptures etc, all inspired by Lapland. It was really good.

We walked across the city centre, past the main railway station, to the "rock church". The Temppeliaukio Church is a Lutheran church, which opened in 1969. It is better known as the rock church, as it made almost completely out of rock. The interior was excavated and built into rock, but is bathed in natural light entering through the glazed dome. We thought it was quite cool - definitely a bit different, which is always good when you have seen about a thousand churches. Sadly it was absolutely packed with American and Japanese tourists, piling off their tour buses. Old American women yelling across a church to each other is never ideal, but it is made worse when the content of the conversation is something along the lines of:

- June...June....June, where's Dorothy?
- What?
- Where's Dorothy?
- Oh I don't know. I haven't seen her.
- Oh, you haven't seen her? Wow. She was outside a minute ago, but now I can't find her...

And so on like that for several minutes. Outside the rock church, we grabbed a coke at Santa's Minimarket - not sure if it is actually owned and operated by the big man himself, but it was an excellent store and quite close to the North Pole, so the chances are good.

We had lunch in the cafe at the National Museum of Finland before we set about exploring the museum itself. It was quite a good museum, tracing Finland from pre-history through to modern times. There was a lot of stuff on the 16-19th centuries, when Finland was ruled by Sweden and Russia and then eventually gained independence.

We then had to dodge a brief rain shower before heading back to the hotel to collect our bags, via the Finnish parliament building and the supermarket to get some supplies. We then caught a taxi down to the ferry terminal for our 6.30pm ferry to Estonia. Surprisingly, there was no passport check or border control at all, so no stamp action for the passport. Disappointing.

The ferry (the Baltic Princess) was brilliant, but it was a very bizarre experience. About 95% of the ferry passengers seemed to be staying on the ferry overnight. It appeared that they had made the journey to Estonia as nothing more than a big Saturday night, instead of going to the pub. People got all glammed up in their cabins and then came down to the bar/restaurant area and proceeded to get absolutely hammered. There were people of all ages (right up to about 70) who were staggering all over the boat, often with a couple of drinks in their hands... When we arrived in Tallinn, us and about 20 others got off the ferry and everyone else carried on partying. Crazy Finns.