Ferry to Helsinki, Finland!

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Hello everybody,

While I was in Tallinn I decided to take a ferry to Helsinki, Finland. It wasn’t originally planned, but I thought about it when I was in Tallinn and I immediately contacted Kati, a Finnish girl I travelled with in Western Australia back in 2008. On a Saturday morning I took the ferry early in the morning, it departed at 7:30 and arrived in Helsinki 2 hours later and I stayed there the whole day. I took the return ferry late in the evening which brought me back to Tallinn at 00:30.

Helsinki is the capital and largest city of Finland with just over 1 million inhabitants. The city was smaller and less busy than I expected. I was very lucky with the weather; it was sunny with clear skies, no clouds to be seen and the temperature was around 19/20°C. Finland is part of the European Union and uses the Euro as its currency as well, which is easy because I didn’t need to change money. Now that I did lay foot on Finland, Norway is the only Scandinavian country I haven’t visited yet! Finland is sparsely populated with about 50% of the population living in the deep south. The country is home of the Nokia headquarters and Helsinki hosted the Summer Olympics in 1952. Finland has a very high standard of living and this can be seen on the sky high prices of most things here.

When I arrived at the harbour, Kati was already there. We immediately took a tram to the city center where we walked around and she showed me around and told me a lot about the city. We went to the Helsinki cathedral (Tuomiokirkko), a church built in mid 19th century. Then we continued to the Kauppatori Market, which I liked a lot. Not too busy, lots of things you can buy and also lots of food!!!! From this place we took a boat which took us to Suomenlinna Islands. Suomenlinna consists of four islands and they are very popular in the summer, when locals all go there for picnic and spend the day together. The islands are home to a big fortress, built in the 18th century when Finland belonged to the Kingdom of Sweden. The site was listed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1991. We walked around, had an ice cream and especially talked a lot about what we’ve done during the last 5 years. We stayed a bit more than 1 hour in Suomenlinna, then we took the ferry back to mainland. Kati continued showing me more of Helsinki’s city center, walking along the Esplanadi Park located between the streets Pohjoisesplanadi and Eteläesplanadi, where the luxurious Hotel Kämp is located (where celebrities such as Madonna have slept). We also went up to the highest floor of Hotel Torni, from which you have excellent views all over Helsinki. It was already past midday and we were a bit tired of walking. We went to this restaurant where Kati used to work and had some lunch. Here I tried smoked deer tongue, which tasted really good! It’s something they eat here in Finland. After the restaurant we went home, then went to the supermarket together with Markus (Kati’s fiancé) to get food for to cook for dinner. Markus is actually an excellent cook and is a very funny guy! After this we went for a while to the Kaivopuisto Park for a drink and we sat down and relaxed on a terrace there. Then we went back home, I rest a little bit before we had a delicious dinner. Time flies fast...it was time for me to leave again to the port.

I had an excellent day in Helsinki and I was glad I decided to go, taking advantage of the opportunity because I don’t know when I’d be around that region again. I was happy to see Kati again, and Kati was happy to see me too. She said she never thought she was going to see me again, at least not in Helsinki, because I live so far, hahaha! All right, thanks for reading this short one and till the next one...will go back “south”!!!

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Comments

[Xiomara]

bunita luga!

[Ido STEEN]

pregunta.
Elton sigun bo ta viaha bo ta laga bo konosirnan mira algu di Korsou via Internet of dvd p.e. di toeristenbureau, dept. di kultura etc. anto kon a para ku e bandera mr. ambassador.?