Helsinki, Finland

Helsinki, Finland

December 3-5, 2009

Day 1

Today we were up around 6:15 am so that we could check-in for our ferry by 7:10 am. We also tried to sneak in some breakfast before check-in which was interesting since breakfast didn't start until 7am. Luckily the ferry was across the street and the breakfast was set up 10 min early. We ate quickly and off we went to the ferry. I pretty much slept through the whole ride. Once in Helsinki, we figured out our ferry had docked in a different location than expected so it was a bit of a search to determine how to get to our hotel cheaply. Thank goodness Trevor is good at that kind of thing and he got us there with very little trouble. Since our room wasn't ready we headed out to do our exploring. Unfortunately, Helsinki does not have an Old Town, so there was no seeing medieval buildings. We followed the Lonely Planet walking tour and saw some nice churches including one built into rock! That was really cool. Of course I also wanted to see the beach here so we headed in that direction. Helsinki is the first city to show evidence of winter since we started this trip! There was frost on the ground and ice patches and once we got to the beach, the sand was frozen. We got to the beach around sunset so we got to see some beautiful colors in the sky. We then headed back to the hotel and realized we wanted to go out for supper so back out we went, into the chilly, humid air, had some Thai and then headed back to the room for the night. Helsinki is extremely modern compared to the other 3 cities we were in. There's also a lot of English everywhere, the buildings are all newer and the people here are much more relaxed with their fashion. It's interesting to see the differences between the countries. The prices here are also interesting to point out. The numbers are all pretty much on par when it comes to prices for items, compared to the Canadian dollar, you just have to remember they're talking in euros, 1.5 times the price. For example, we went to McDonald's for lunch and paid 9.75, which is the same as we would have paid back home, except when you convert, our meal actually cost around $15!

Day 2

First sign of real snow. It was all over the ground when we woke up this morning. We decided to go see the Suomenlinna Sea Fortress today. It is on an island about 15-20 min by ferry from Helsinki, but still Helsinki. I believe that the island was used as a defense system against people invading Helsinki. It was started by the Swedish when they owned Finland and then the Russias rebuilt it or something. Anyway, it was really cool. The ferry was fun. We saw many little islands with one house or two houses on them along the way. When we arrived on our island, there was a map showing us the basic path to take to get from one side to the other (but really it's 2 islands because you cross a bridge over water at the halfway mark.) On the first side there were pretty much just houses and information buildings (maybe museums too) but the second side was neat with hidden underground rooms and cannons everywhere. It reminded me of the movie Tristan and Isolde. Trevor enjoyed sticking his head into the cannons sayng that it was warmer in there. We climbed around took pictures, explored the rooms (some with water in them). It was fun. We then headed back to the ferry, and since it was to be another half hour, went inside and had a drink. Once back in Helsinki, we walked around downtown a bit and looked into some gift shops and then went to eat at a place called Zetor which was a very dark but very fun pub looking restaurant. They had tractors inside and chicken wire everywhere. It had a farm feel. They were suppose to serve Finnish food, that's why we came (and Trevor likes wacky décor). Trevor had sautéed reindeer with ligonberries and I had salmon with mushroom sauce. It was quite tasty. It was then back to the hotel for the night. It gets really dark really early and it's easy to forget it's 4 o'clock when it looks like 7 or 8.

Day 3

Part of our hostel cost included 3 hours in the morning when you could use the sauna. Saunas are really big in all the countries we visited on this trip. Figuring that I had to take part in this Finnish tradition, I woke up early to get to the sauna before 9:30am. It was a very pleasant way to wake up. I started with the sauna to myself, but soon there were 4 of us squished into the tiny sauna. The saunas are all gender specific (most people go naked). After my lovely relaxing morning I went back to the room to "waste" time until checkout. We had to be a little inventive today because we no longer had a tourist bus ticket. It would have been expensive purchasing a day ticket for the bus so we had to figure out where we were going to go to be long enough to take a whole day, but short enough that we wouldn't miss our train for Rovaniemi at 7:26p. Trevor wanted to go see the Sibelius monument (looked like frozen organ pipes from the picture) so we headed out there. We realized that we were really close to the monument when we had gone to the beach on day 1, but we hadn't known the Sibelius monument was going to be cool, so we never went. We headed over and along the way we saw more of Helsinki downtown. There was a ski sale happening. It took us about 30-40min to get there, but we made it. There was a large tour group there, getting in the pictures, so we waited patiently until they left, at which point we pretty much had the whole thing to ourselves (at least for 5 min) before another smaller group came. We took some cool pictures, and Trevor tried to climb inside the pipes and then we headed to the old Olympic stadium. My goal was to find the Olympic sign which took us walking around the entire complex (and after walking for quite some time, felt like forever). We then headed back to downtown where we decided to eat in the food court of the Forum shopping centre. This was unlike any food court I had ever been to before. It was like a restaurant. You order at the place you want food and then you sit down and they bring the food to you, dressed as waiters and waitresses. And, it was way cheaper than a real restaurant. Only problem was finding a place to sit. Otherwise, the food was great and cheap. It was back to the hotel to pick up our stuff so that we could walk back to downtown to catch the train. My feet were hurting, but we kept on walking. We made it to the train station with plenty of time and waited on a bench until it finally came. Our train was very nice and roomy. The seats went back really far. I ended up having a short nap (8-10p) at which time we headed to the restaurant car to have some drinks. We then went back to our car and went to sleep to await our early morning arrival in Rovaniemi.