The Log Dog Blog: Helsinki March 2019

We were supposed to go to WDW for three nights from March 1-4. We had a reservation at Port Orleans French Quarter and were looking forward to a fun weekend.

That all changed when C got an email about a sale on IcelandAir. We decided to look at the possible destinations and Finland piqued our interest, as we'd never been there. When we priced it out, two return flights from Washington to Finland would cost less than two nights at Port Orleans French Quarter! SERIOUSLY! Obviously it was no contest, so we cancelled the trip to WDW and booked the flights to Finland!

I think I had unrealistic expectations of Finland because I have to be honest and share that I did not like Helsinki at all for the first few days of our trip. I think I was expecting it to be like the Scandinavian countries we've been to and it is not. I love Norway so much that looking back now, Finland really didn't stand a chance of topping it. It has a very different feel to it, so once I just accepted that this is just how Finland is, I ended up enjoying it quite a bit.

One of the biggest surprises to me was the general level of unfriendliness we encountered. This was true across all of the days of the trip. People do not make eye contact. People do not smile. People do not hold doors for you and when you hold doors for others, they do not say thank you. Overall, just extremely gruff, frankly. And overtly aggressive in terms of cutting you off when in line, when getting on a street car, when entering a building, etc. So once I got over the shock of this type of behavior, it didn't bother me as much as the trip progressed.

Once extreme example of this was when we were walking to dinner on Thursday night. We were approached by a pair of fairly hostile men who asked for cigarettes. C shook his head, waved them off, and said "sorry," and the language difference made them believe he said something else, so they followed us, yelled at us, threatened us, and blocked our way in a confrontational manner. While C was able to keep his cool, I was terrified, thinking here we were in a foreign country and I had no idea where to look for help if things took a turn for the worse. I was physically shaking. C kept explaining that all he had said was "sorry" and that we didn't have any cigarettes, and thankfully one of them seemed somewhat reasonable because he sort of talked down his crazy angry friend and they ultimately let us walk away. Those two morons really left me disliking Helsinki. This happened in a well-lit tourist area, less than two blocks from our hotel – it's not like we were roaming around some sketchy area. I really didn't want two jerks to ruin our trip, so I decided I wasn't going to judge an entire city based on one awful encounter, and luckily we did have fun on the subsequent days of our trip.

Monday, March 4 and Tuesday, March 5

We flew out of Dulles and were fortunate to have an empty middle seat between us for the first flight! We landed in Reykjavik and had a very tight connection at Keflavik airport, arriving at 6:05 am and leaving a 7:30 am, while having to go through passport control/immigration.

One thing that happens quite often at Keflavik airport is that planes will land out in no man's land on the tarmac, then passengers have to climb down a staircase and board a shuttle bus that takes them to the terminal. As you might imagine, that takes a good chunk of time because it is a tedious process. By the time we did that, went through passport control, and walked to the gate for our flight, it was time to board – at which time we had to get on another shuttle bus to be driven out to the plane and then climb the staircase. Not exactly efficient!

We did not have a free middle seat on the flight from Reykjavik to Helsinki, but I slept most of the flight so it was no big deal and a relatively short three-hour flight. We landed in Helsinki at 1:00 pm and because there was no immigration to go through, we went straight through the airport and took the train from airport to city.

I have to give Helsinki credit for fantastic public transportation. Their app makes purchasing tickets for trains and streetcars super easy and we had no trouble navigating around because of the detailed maps it provides. Every stop has electronic signs with the arrival times of all of the lines that stop there and really, it is just a great system.

After about a 30-minutes train ride, we got off at the main station in Helsinki and it was less than a ten-minute walk to our hotel. We stopped for lunch on our way before checking in to Hotel Kämp (which is listed in the 1000 Places to See Before You Die book, and was a happy discovery because C had not booked it for that reason - he is just THAT good of a travel planner!).

We had grand plans to stay up and battle the jet lag, but ended up falling asleep and then waking up at different times off and on until 11:00 am the next day!

Wednesday, March 6

We got up at 11:00 am and went across the street to grab some breakfast at Café Fazer before walking around and looking at the architecture and generally admiring the buildings around the city. We also went to an outdoor skating rink, which was a lot of fun, and then stopped for a snack and a drink at a pub before going back to our room for a short rest.

Finland has its own professional hockey league, so C found tickets to a game for Wednesday night. We took a streetcar to the arena, and it was great to experience a game where we could not understand a word of what was being said! The fans were enthusiastic and seeing the little customs they had (clapping loudly in unison for the entire duration of every penalty kill) was interesting. The ice is wider, so it was somewhat a different style of play, but any night we can go to a hockey game is a great night! Also, one of the songs they played in the arena included the words, "Hello, Canada! Let's play hockey!" which we found highly amusing!

Thursday, March 7

The weather was really crummy – windy, sleet/rain, cold – so we really didn't do much other than visit the public library and then hang out in a café for a couple of hours. There is a chain called Espresso House and we referred to it as the Tim Hortons of Helsinki because there were countless locations and we stopped there often!

While we were just hiding out from the bad weather on Thursday afternoon, we ended up chatting with a very nice guy from America who now splits his time between London and Helsinki for work. I was wearing my Hudson Bay mittens, which tipped him off that we were tourists and prompted him to strike up a conversation. He was honestly the only person we really spoke to during our entire trip. Even the hotel staff – while pleasant and professional – was not into small talk of any kind.

In addition to our fellow American, we met a dog that was at the table beside us (a black and white Border Collie) and she was the sweetest thing ever. She really liked C and we spent quite a bit of time petting her and telling her she was a good girl! You know who DIDN'T speak to us? Her owner! No eye contact, no hello, no goodbye, nothing. Very strange. I expect so much more of dog people! She certainly didn't seem to mind us paying attention to her dog, but it was clear she had no intention of engaging with us in any way. Bizarre. Definitely different social norms in Finland than in other places we've been.

Thursday night was the aforementioned scary encounter with the two jerks. By that time, I had a pretty unfavorable view of Helsinki.

FaceTime with Ginny

Friday, March 8

This ended up being a great day and was the turning point for the trip. We took a streetcar down to the water and boarded a ferry for a 2.5 hour ride to Estonia! Yes, another country to add to our growing list!

The boat ride itself was fine, but when we arrived in Tallinn and walked to the medieval part of the city, I was blown away. It reminded me so much of Prague, which is unquestionably one of my favorite cities of all time. The buildings were beyond beautiful and I found myself wishing we had more that just the allotted few hours to explore! Just an absolutely gorgeous place. I'd return there in a heartbeat.

The boat ride back was entertaining because we sat on a different deck than the ride over, and there was karaoke, which was even more entertaining than usual because everyone was singing in Finnish and we had no idea what any of the songs were about!

Saturday, March 9

This was somewhat of a quiet day once again because it was quite cold out. We went to a concert at the music center; the performers were all teenagers and they were very, very good! One performance was a piano and violin duet, one was a cello soloist, two were accordion soloists (called the harmonnika in Finland!), and one was an oboe soloist. We were really impressed with the caliber of talent and it was nice to hear some unusual instruments! Other than the concert, our day pretty much consisted of going from place to place to eat or drink something and stay warm!

Sunday, March 10

Thankfully, Finland was not scheduled for Daylight Saving Time this weekend, which is absolutely my least favorite day of the year. Such ridiculous and antiquated nonsense. You may recall that last year, I experienced it TWICE (in San Antonio and in Rome) because it happened to fall on different weekends, so being able to avoid it this year was fabulous!

We went to the Moomin Café, which is based on a comic that seems to be very popular in northern Europe. I knew nothing about the characters, but we kept seeing it listed as a recommended place to visit and it was a five-minute walk from our hotel. It was so cute!

Afterwards, we took a streetcar to the Sibelius Monument, which is dedicated to a Finnish composer, and it was a pretty cool sculpture! We then walked over to a church that was built into the side of a rocky hillside and it was really beautiful with a lovely organ and stunning natural light! Our last stop was going to be at a cat café, but we didn't realize we needed a reservation because the place is so small. Oh well!

Seeing as it was our last night, we had the unpleasant task of packing, but we really have gotten pretty skilled in terms of what we bring on a trip. We were thinking back to some of the trips we took ten or fifteen years ago and how we would take two large suitcases and two jam-packed carryon bags if we were traveling for a week. For this trip, we each brought a backpack and there was still plenty of room in them. I am a bit of a bag snob and I am very particular about features and design. We bought new travel backpacks from E-Bags and I am extremely pleased with them. Very functional! I know we will be getting a lot of use out of these bags! I got some questions when I posted on IG about these bags and we don't have any secret method to our packing – we are just very choosy about what we bring and we use space bags for everything! Obviously we brought winter coats, hats, scarves, and mittens on this trip and they fit perfectly into our backpacks because of the space bags we pack them in! Traveling with only a carryon serves four purposes: 1) no baggage fees; 2) no chance of lost luggage; 3) no waiting at baggage claim; and 4) no hauling around too much stuff when getting between airports, train stations, taxis, and hotels. This is the first oversees trip we've done with just a backpack each, but it was a success and made moving around so much easier than multiple bags of rolling luggage has in the past!

Monday, March 11

We got up early to visit two libraries before we had to head to the train station. The first was the National Library of Finland and the second was the library at the University of Helsinki. Both were absolutely lovely. I adore libraries and it is always fun to visit different ones when we travel!

After a quick stop at a bookstore to seek out the Harry Potter books (they only had five of the seven titles in stock, but I took a photo of them anyway!), we returned to the hotel, picked up our bags, and checked out. Then we walked over to the train station, took the train to the airport, and began our journey home! Before we left, I did get to watch the de-icing process right outside my window, which was pretty neat!

Our flight from Helsinki to Reykjavik was about 3.5 hours. The middle seat was occupied, but when we arrived, the plane actually pulled up to a proper gate so there was no staircase and bus insanity! Our connection time was about an hour, but C was randomly selected for additional screening so that slowed us down and we got to the gate right as they were making the announcement about beginning to board. Fortunately, we are now pretty familiar with Keflavik airport, so we knew where to stand at the gate and were among the first people on the plane. When they announced that boarding was complete and we had an empty middle seat between us, I was overjoyed because that meant I'd be able to get some writing done on the 6.5 hour flight home!

I do have one question about airlines: when will they stop allowing seats to recline?!? It really is just ridiculous. It's a domino effect that when one person does it, the person behind them does it, and so on. Until it gets to me because I never recline my seat. Ever. I think it's rude to encroach on the space of the passenger behind me. How do I know what they've got balanced on their tray table that might be toppled over because I recline my seat? So I don't. I've written about the benefits of the "no frills" airlines like Frontier and Spirit on a number of occasions, and this is yet another example of their forward thinking because the seats on those planes don't recline. Which is amazing. Because you don't have people feeling aggravated that someone is in their space. Let's be real – economy seats are already too close together, and then you add in the person in front of you tipping their seat back 15-30 degrees?!? Just stop, airlines. STOP. Reclining seats are complete and utter nonsense.

Food

Just a quick note on food. Much of the food is seafood-based in Finland, which came as no surprise to us, but it did make finding things to eat a bit of a challenge. We found a burger place that served veggie burgers and a Japanese place that served vegetarian ramen, and we ended up eating at those two places several times (not just because they had vegetarians options, but also because the food was delicious!). Of course, pizza is always a safe choice for us, as are pastries at cafés, so we managed just fine throughout the week!

Hotel

This post would not be complete without photos of the incredible hotel where we stayed for the entire trip. Beautiful is the only word for it!