Blogs from Helsinki, Uusimaa, Finland, Europe - page 2

Lunar/Chinese New Year means the opportunity to get out of China for a bit. I wouldn't have minded travelling in China, but probably left it too late to any train tickets and decent accommodation. Flights within Asia were almost as expensive as those to Europe and there wasn't really anywhere in Asia that I really had my heart set on visiting. Europe on the other hand, there were quite a few places I fancied. Finnair had a direct flight to Helsinki that left and arrived at a decent time, so I bit the bullet and got the credit card out. The flight was fine and only took about 8 hours. The food was a bit hit and miss, but the cabin crew were lovely. Walking through the airport was like a ghost town, I was unsure ... read more

The last full day of our holiday has finally come as we are due to fly out of Helsinki at around midnight to Singapore and then onto Melbourne and Adelaide. But before then there was much to see around Helsinki before we left. We started the day packing up our apartment, repacking our suitcases to ensue we met the 23 kg limit, placed our suitcases into luggage storage and headed for the Helsinki marketplace full of eats, souvineers and Knick knacks servicing the thousands of cruise ship passengers that must pass through this area each day. After 2 days in bed, Tish was well enough to venture out for a full day but we were still going to take it easy. However, taking it easy didn’t last for long as the ever adventurous Tish decided to ... read more

Today was another travelling days as we moved from Copenhagen to Helsinki where we boarded our Ferry (The Princess Anastasia) to St Petersburg Russia. We packed our bags and left our Copenhagen hotel room around 10:45 am headed for Osterport train station, catching the first train to the airport. We had already checked in the night before so upon arriving at the airport we adjusted the weight in our bags to be 23 kg each and then had to print our luggage tags from a machine before dropping them off on a conveyor belt, scanning the luggage barcode and sending them on their way. Before long we were on our Finnair flight to Helsinki and 1 hour 45 minutes later we were in Helsinki airport making our way to the underground train station. We caught the ... read more

We arrived in Helsinki 20 minutes before midnight. It had just become night - the light fading from the west as we flew into the airport. It would be light again here in less than 4 hours. If you like daylight, this was the place to be on your summer city break. Helsinki is actually the second most northerly capital city in the world behind Reykjavik in Iceland and just pipping the capital of Norway, Oslo, into third. Close neighbours, Tallinn (Estonia) and Stockholm (Sweden) complete the top five. Helsinki Airport was humming even at this late hour. Flights arriving and bodies lying around waiting for the early morning departures. The queues were long at immigration and I was just about to curse Scandinavian efficiency or the lack of it, when the automatic facial recognition passport ... read more

We have now been in Helsinki for a couple of days before departing tomorrow evening on a ferry (Bird says surprise Vicki and Carol Ann) for St. Petersburg, Russia. Even bumped into our ship as we departed Tallin, we'll show you. Helsinki doesn't have a great number of sights. For the considerable majority of it's history Finland was the property of someone else (Sweden and Russia). It was not even founded until the mid sixteenth century (by the Swedes who owned the place and wanted to compete with the trading city of Tallin). It remained a speck on the map until the nineteenth century. Thus, there is little history here. However, the people are wonderful. There were a number of times someone noticed airhead tourists struggling and spontaneously offered assistance. Just nice. Yet they clearly think ... read more