Helsinki is one of those towns you’ve heard of but don’t know why. It’s easy to make the perception as it was nothing but a trading / fishing post for Sweden until 1550. It wasn’t until the 1800s anything happened, even then it wasn’t anything to write a report on. Sweden kind of got bored with it and handed it over to Russia, as they took it as a prize after beating Sweden in 1809, Russia decided to modernize it and built it to look like St. Petersburg, locals got angry at Russia, joined the Nazi’s in WW2, Russia bombed the heck out of them, took them back after the war, rebuilt them and there you have all the history of Helsinki.
Given the lack of must to see culturally, due to the lack of any real history, I’m sleeping in. The ship arrives at 7 and those that haven’t been here before don’t know things don’t open until at least 10.
Winters here are pretty brutal so when the weather is nice everyone takes full use of being outside
Notice any Russian influence in their architecture?
The “pool”
You can do laps in a lap pool to the left or in an ocean pool to the right
What this town does well is their farmer market
Daily you can get delicious, fresh Norwegian salmon with some sides
You can also get some fillets to take home
First of the mount churches to visit
A quick turn to the left and you see the outer mount church
They’re trying to be more metropolitan
This is a beautiful Russian Orthodox Uspenski Cathedral
Oh look, a gold plated book about this church
Such detail goes into these silver-relief art pieces
Samples of one of he squares
Walk 10 minutes and you’re at the Helsinki Cathedral
Of course Alexander II builds a monument to himself
Giving you an idea how high above the city this place is
And the steps are no joke, very steep
More of the St Petersburg vibe
The train station really is sunning
Burger King is quite popular here
Not sure there are better places to eat a wopper
Nice fancy restaurant on the other end of BK
Notice we’ve again shifted away from pasteries and back to bread/dough-based things
I need to try the cinnamon roll / thing
To give you an idea how big this is
Interesting how they layered it on top of itself rather than in a circle
After getting slightly lost I found this beautiful center park
Hidden flower beds
Time to get lunch so of course the salmon stands are a must
Absolutely delicious
And that’s kind of the city
Though not much history it is pretty
4pm and its still in the upper 60s
These tiny volcanic islands are everywhere. How are trees growing through it?
On weekends when it is really hot you know this is packed
And just like that we are to head west towards Stockholm
