Viking Party to Helsinki...

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We left the City Backpackers Hostel on Saturday (after a 500m sprint for the boat, backpacks and all) we boarded the Viking Ferry to Helsinki. We either got lucky or had actually paid for it but we managed to get a luxury cabin on the Captains deck (nothing but the best for us of course). The cabin rocked - it was basically a hotel room with tv, balcony and best of all a mini bar - result! We headed down to one of the fancy restaurants and treated ourselves to a lovely meal - no cheese sandwiches today!! After that, we took a trip to the duty free and stocked up to calm the sea nerves lol We had some light refreshments 😉 on the balcony, watched the sun go down and all the thousands of islands go past- the scenery was stunning. We ended the night off by heading down to the nightclub and partied like Vikings the rest of the night.



Arrived in Helsinki ten-ish and jumped on a tram and headed to our hostel which was in the Olympic Stadium from 1952 - we are in training for the 500m backpack sprint after all lol The hostel is pretty basic compared to the last two - we did have a twin room but dont think its been decorated from 1952!! After we checked in we headed into Helsinki and done some sightseeing. Helsinki definitely doesnt have the charm of Copenhagen or Stockholm!!



On Monday we headed to Suomenlinna Maritime Fortress, which is a group of islands that were built into a fortress dating back to the 1700's - we got the taxi boat over to it and spent a few hours looking around. If you like dark creepy tunnels, canons and big thick walls this is the place for you...lol



Helsinki is a pretty compact city and you can walk from one side to another in 15/20 mins so we had got round most of the major sights on the first day, on Tuesday we had to break our number one rule and visit a museum-bboooo!!!! We went to the National History Museum, which had a cool picture of a Dinosaur in the advert. Since most of the exhibitions didnt have an English translation we didnt know what the hell we were looking at!! lol So after trying to name our own exhibitions and a game of bushtucker trail with all the creepy insects (*no insects were harmed in the making of this blog) we left and had another walk around Helsinki.



We found Helsinki to be pretty expensive again - hopefully as we start to head east things will start to get cheaper and we can afford two meals a day!! Wha hoo!! Heading for St Petersburg tomorrow - so excited (Phil was so stressing about getting into St Petersburg he gave himself a nose bleed today hahaha).



Lots of love to everyone back home!!



-Phil & Alana xx

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