From Helsinki to Stockholm via Åland

 

As I mentioned at the end of the last post, this evening we are sailing from Helsinki to Stockholm on the Viking Line.

Travelling to the Ferry

We left the Holiday Inn, City Centre, Helsinki at 3.15pm and arrived at the tram stop at 3.23pm. The tram arrived at 3.45pm and we arrive at the ship at 4pm as check-in starts. 

On Board

We were on the ship by 4.10pm and in our cabin number 7120 by 4.15pm - a very smooth process. 

The check in card printed at the self-service machine at the port acts as our entry card and the key card to the cabin (which to Drew and Captain Jack's annoyance I keep calling our room) which is very easy. 

An hour from departure I thought we had time for some blogging, sadly the wifi on the ship doesn't allow access to Blogger or Flickr, the connection is fine, but like the Great Western train at the beginning of the holiday some, heavy user sites, are inaccessible. So, I don't get as much blogging done as I had hoped. Meanwhile Drew took some photos as we left port, he captures the city and the islands around very well.

Åland

The home port of the Gabriella, the ferry on which we are travelling is Mariehamn, the capital of the Åland Islands. We stop at Åland over the night. 

The Åland Islands are an autonomous region of Finland, they are Swedish-speaking and have a long and complicated history which led to their autonomy. But for me Åland is associated, not with its history, but with murder! I watched the two series called in English 'Thicker Than Water' a Swedish programme which was shown on Walter Presents during lockdown, Spoiler Alert - they were a very murderous family, with a murderous history! So, I first became aware of Åland in that programme. Worse still in another Walter Presents series:  'Agatha Christie's Hjerson' the first episode, Blackout, is set on a ship heading to Stockholm which stops at Åland. It looks a lot like this one - what fun, spending the night on a murder boat heading to murder island 😂

Dinner

We went down to dinner, the floor, oops, deck, below ours at 7pm. As we walk down to dinner, I get a real sense of Deja Vue, I wonder if they recorded the murder in Hjerson on this actual boat, it all fits so well.

Drew began with a pickled cherry tomatoes and avocado cream.

I had Herring three ways - salted herring, herring marinated in dill and vinegar and a herring sorbet! Each was distinctive and each was very, very tasty. 

Drew went for grilled fillet of beef with truffle sauce and vegetables for his main.

While I had a delicious, braised pike with pan-fried scallop and roe sauce. 

For dessert Drew had a Lemon posset, liquorice sorbet and verbena which he absolutely loved. 

I opted for cheese and thankfully there was no messing about, just three delicious pieces of cheese - Brie, Cheddar and Blue cheese.

After dinner we take a walk out on the deck and enjoy the sunset with a gentle buy bracing breeze. We go to bed at 10pm Eastern European Time which will be 9pm Central European Time.

Sleep

I woke at 4.30am EET as the ship pulled out of Åland, now having heard it going in. We had survived without any murder most foul. The restful journey continued.

Morning

I got up at 6am (5am Stockholm time) and showered and dressed. The shower, even though a little small had a good flow of hot water and was really refreshing. I've been in student accommodations with smaller shower rooms! 

We saw Kapellskär the first Swedish town from the side of the ship. There are loads of islands which the ship navigates with care. It is quite relaxing seeing the sea and the occasional island go by.

At 8am (7am Stockholm time) we go down to breakfast (a Premium Breakfast is included in the price of the Premium cabins i.e. the ones with windows (or as Captain Jack would say - Port Holes)).

This is a wonderful breakfast with soused herring, a really sharp version; lightly cured rainbow trout; smoked salmon and roe and seaweed caviar. 

Drew opted for the traditional cooked breakfast which was made up of scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, semi-dried tomato and spinach which I had the Ville Viking's breakfast of bacon, scrambled eggs, sausages, meatballs, semi-dried tomatoes and spinach. We seem to have forgotten to photograph them!

For our breakfast dessert I had Brie and some Farm Cheese with cloudberries.

Drew went for a cookie, a cheese cake and something that was very much like an Eton Mess.

Breakfast finished at 9am (8am) we go back to the cabin for the last two hours. We avail ourselves of the free mini-bar in the cabin, water for me, Coke for Drew and we sit and watch as more of the coast and a million little Swedish islands go by.

More Murders

I've moved on from Sven and Åland now, this morning I'm reminded of the Joona Linna books, one of which, the Nightmare, has him rushing from island to island in search of a murderer. You can see why it was so complicated with all these islands in the Stockholm Archipelago. [Co-Pilot's note: Rest assured, dear readers, that he is not only fascinated by Swedish murders, but he also takes a keen interest in the murders of Norway, Denmark, France and Finland but his initial interest in the genre came about in Sicily as seen in the stories of Inspector Montalbano].

We arrive at 10am local time and disembark from the floor our room/cabin was on. What we do in the day ahead will wait until the next blog post.

Lauantaina Helsingissä - Saturday in Helsinki

 

Later today will see us leave Helsinki by ferry. But first here's how we made use of the rest of the day before the journey.

Morning

I woke at 4am on this Saturday morning, but really unusually I went back to bed.

The sugar rush of the night before from the drinks at Palace seem to be causing me to feel very, very lethargic this morning. 

I woke again at 6am, got up and made Drew and I a cup of tea each. Uploaded our photos on to Flickr - then did our ablutions and went down to breakfast at 7.45am (there is a late start for Breakfast on Saturday's - 7.30am not 6.30am, Sundays is 8am, but we won't be here for that!)

As I discussed yesterday mackerel comes in three different sauces here, so I tried each of them. My favourite remains the basic vinegar and dill sauce - dill is a herb I don't use enough, but will when I return home, as it is such a wonderful flavour. 

We were back up in the room at 8.15am, time for a visit to the loo and then out into a slightly drippy, light rain in Helsinki.

Route

The route for today looks like this:

We are catching up with things we didn't manage yesterday and some additional items that I'd identified through our reading.

Sibelius

We caught the number 4 Tram 

to Töölöntori (or Tolo Torg in Swedish) from where we walked up to Töölö Lutheran Church. A pretty church, not open at this time of the morning. 

We walked through the lovely park around the church and came to the Ilmatar ja sotka monument - this represents the birth of the world from the perspective of the Finnish Epic Poem - Kalevala.

At the end of this park and across a main road we see the Sibelius Monument it is flocked by Japanese tourists, but Drew manages to take the images of the great composer's head while the other visitors are with the pipes and then manages to get the pipes when the 50+ people move on and return to their tour bus.

It is a spectacular monument designed like organ pipes to symbolise his greatest works.

Seaside Walk

Moving on from the monument we head towards the Rock Church which is a reasonable walk away, so rather than going back to the main road, we decide to walk along the seaside. Which turned out to be a very pretty route. The light rain from earlier had passed over and the sun had come out, making the walk even more pleasant.

The Rock Church - Temppeliaukio

We reached the Rock Church after 30 minutes of walking. While it is simply a Lutheran parish church in this part of the city, it is also much more. Built into the body of a large rock formation it brings to my mind that I grew up in the Bon-Y-Maen part of Swansea. Bon-Y-Maen means the base of the rock, though the rock in the centre of Bon-Y-Maen is not large like this one, it made me feel an affinity for the building.

The church was in planning and construction for 60 years, but was finally opened in 1969 and has been used for regular worship ever since.

Olympic Stadium

Helsinki came second to Japan in the bid to host the Olympic Games of 1940, with the start of the Sino-Japanese war Japan withdrew its hosting and Helsinki became the chosen location. Putting resources into developing its stadium. However, the start of the Second World War made these arrangements impossible. Post-War it was agreed that Helsinki would host the second post war Olympics in 1952, after London in 1948.

The Olympic Stadium is one of the sites natives of Helsinki always seem to mention when you ask them what the highlights of their cities are. When talking to the hotel receptionist yesterday afternoon I'd ask for his favourite sites in the City and this was the only one that we had not already visited yesterday.

We caught the number 10 Tram to Töölön halli and the Stadium was just around the corner.

Olympia Terminal 

After our visit to the Olympic Stadium, we travelled on Tram number 2 13 stops, right across the City to the Olympia Terminal, one of the many ports in the City. From here, we got a great view of the ship we would be travelling on tonight.  

As we approached the Port we saw a lot of people running towards us. It turns out that today is the Helsinki Marathon and we were on the route. If we'd only known, Drew could have joined in 😉. [Co-pilot's note: Larks, dear readers, Larks!! - He's such a card.] 

Helsinki's Catholic Cathedral - St Henry's

Having visited two cathedrals yesterday, we were in this part of the town to visit the third - St. Henry's Catholic Cathedral. There are many internal photos of the church on Flickr, starting here. It is a simple, but attractive church, well worth climbing up from the Port to visit. 

Clas Ohlsen

At 12.30pm we caught the Number 3 Tram, across the road from St Henry's back to Central Station where we arrived at 12.45pm. But before going back to the hotel we went to visit Clas Ohlsen. Before 2018 Clas Ohlsen had a store in Cardiff and we were frequent visitors because we enjoyed the eclectic range of items that they sold, so when we saw the store was still open here in Finland we decided to visit. While we couldn't buy much - giving our need to pack what we bought, we enjoyed looking at all the vital things, you never knew you needed. [Co-pilot's note: I tried, dear readers, to point out the folly of us not having a snow blower, back in the day, but he just didn't understand the urgent need!] Anyway, we did find some storage for freezing small amounts of yeast ready for use. Task fulfilled we went back to the hotel at 1.30pm ready to complete packing and check-out by 2.00pm.

Travel to the Ferry 

We decided to stop for a coffee in the pleasant downstairs coffee shop in the hotel. 

We had become confused by the timetable of the number 5 tram. It was clear that it was the best route to the Viking Ferry terminal, but when did it run. We discovered that it actually only runs when the ferry is due to go out or come back. It runs for the 90 minutes the terminal is open, so it made sense to wait for the first tram, we could have caught the no 4 and wakws 500 meters but decided the no 5 was easiest allround. 

We leave the hotel at 3.15pm for the 3.45pm Tram and it drops us right outside the terminal (of course the destination is bilingual and the two names look nothing like each other!)

The details of the journey will be in the next blog post, but to complete this one, some reflections on Helsinki.

Transport in Helsinki

The network of buses, trams and metros in Helsinki work so well together you'd really wonder why anyone would use a car. As I mentioned in the first post about Helsinki we bought €9 all-day tickets and did the same yesterday afternoon.

The first 24 hours we travelled eight single journeys (at €3.10 per journey) €24.10 - so a saving of €13.10. In the second 24 hours we travelled on six single journeys, one last night and five today - €18.6, so €9.60 saving. Clearly Helsinki likes frequent travel on their system.

Some notes on Helsinki

Helsinki, was, for me, a means to an end - part of a route rather than a destination, yet it turned out to be one of the most fascinating and enjoyable of the cities we have visited. But it wasn't the big things that I noticed most, but the little ones. 

I haven't mentioned it before, but since Warsaw we haven't seen electric hand-driers, all three Baltic states use paper to dry one's hands. It was a relief to be back somewhere with electric hand-driers after years of being told how much more economic and hygienic they are, I didn't realise how well the message has convinced me until I missed them!

The other thing which Helsinki returns us to is a ground floor. It has been Berlin since we last had a Floor zero, but here we are back with the familiar numbering - These small things could easily be missed, but amazing how much you notice them, hence taking this time to mention them to you here in the blog. 

Eating at the Palace - Palace Ravintola, Helsinki

As I mentioned at the end of the last post tonight is one of our three posh (or as Drew says - Poncy) dinners planned for the holiday. It is at Palace Ravintola on the 10th floor of a modernist building on Etheleranta. Unbeknown to us we had taken a photograph of the building while on our walk this morning. You can see the big Palace sign on the left.

We leave the hotel at 6.30pm and walk to the tram stop at the front of the railway station. We catch the number 2 tram to Etheleranta and walk a few feet to the Restaurant - a 2 starred Michelin Restaurant. The tram stops right outside the building so, we arrive at 6.45pm for our 7pm meal.

I mentioned above that the restaurant is on the 10th floor, so after entering we are shown to the lift, which only has two options floor five and floor ten - I never discovered what was at floor five, I hope you recognise how hard it was not to push that button by mistake 😉

We were shown to our seats and had this wonderful view of the preparation team in the kitchen - behind them is the large window which allows us to see the whole kitchen.

It appears the restaurant is proud of its Michelin stars which are emblazoned on its preparation station. It turns out that the chef in the centre would serve us three of our courses - he is Benjam Papp a former figure skater who trained in the Pacific Institute of Culinary Arts, Vancouver before starting his career in Canada and then moving to Helsinki. 

We were served a scented hot towel; I'd used it before I photographed it. At the time I thought the wood plate it was served on was worth photographing, though wood became the theme of all the plates - still it is pretty well done. The person who served us said that these and the plates were all made by an individual craftsman in the city. 

We were next introduced to Olli Nurmilahti, the Head Sommelier at the restaurant, who discussed with us the options for the non-alcoholic drinks options. He introduced us to the non-alcoholic sparkling wine - Sparkling zero% Wine made from Red and White Currents and their leaves.  It was fizzy and tangy, a great combination to begin.

We then had two little bites to start, the first was Vendace Roe with potato, chillies and dill flower (at 9 and 3 in the picture), light and fragrant. Vendace is not a fish I'd come across before coming to Finland, but it seems to be quite dominant here. We had it as part of dinner last night, saw vendace burgers on sale at the market and here it is again. 

The other little bite was Lobster, Pumpkin and Red Kosho (at 12 and 6) the kosho, with its chilli richness brought the flavour of the lobster and pumpkin to the fore, absolutely delicious. 

The third bite, served at the same time, but suggested to be eaten last of the three, was Finnish Goose Liver, caramelised onion and thyme, as you can see the team had designed it to look like oreos, part of the game of confusing the eyes and the tongue in the way the food is presented. The foie gras was gentle and creamy and the onion and thyme bring the flavours that remind me of my childhood, when my mother would prefer parsley, onion and thyme over sage and onion in her chicken stuffing, so they felt both innovative and homely at the same time.  

I mentioned the quality of wood plates before and took a photo of the base of this one which shows the quality of the pine work. I can't find the makers mark online - anyone else able to identify the source? 

Olli appeared with our next drink, I don't know what shoes Olli wears, but his gentle reappearance beside the table evidences some sort of soft shoe as he seems to appear beside you with a drink, rather than clatter towards you. This time Olli arrived with Tomato Water. This is light tomato juice filtered with lemon verbena and basil salt. It smells like lemon, tastes like a very sharp tomato and is delicious - its ability to match the next two courses of food proved perfect, Olli clearly is clever, not just soft-shoed. 

The next dish is Danish hiramasa, wasabi and white currant. The Sashimi style hiramasa combines with wasabi in a long-standing flavour in the Japanese tradition, the local white currant brings this dish from Japan to Finland with the sharp balance to the rich fish and zingy wasabi. I was so eager to taste it following its introduction that I'd got half-way through before remembering to take a photo - sorry.

The next dish was presented to us by chef Jonathan Slotte, Jonathan won the Chef of the Year 2022 competition and a little taste of his food and you know why. This dish was Norwegian King Crab, spiced tomatoes and basil. The cold water crab was beautiful and refreshing, sitting in a gazpacho style cold soup with fennel and flowering coriander and oregano, what a combination of mind bending flavours! 

Olli being busy with other guests our next drink was introduced and presented by the Restaurant Manager, Liam Fahy I'd spoken to Liam yesterday when they had rung to confirm the booking, so he asked where in Wales we were from. He grew up in Worcester and is a rugby fan, so has visited the Millenium Stadium on many occasions. 

The drink was a sparkling combination of green tea, white tea and jasmine tea from the Copenhagen Sparkling Tea Company, Copenhagen – so bright and refreshing. The colour is light green with a delicate hint of yellow - delicious.

The next dish was again presented by Benjam, it was Palace Reserve Caviar with Sweet Corn and Dashi Butter. What a flavour, the corn was done in three ways and the dashi broth was tangy, but the salty, immersive caviar stole the show, as was intended. No strong flavours, but delightful ones both alone and in combination. [Co-pilot's note: This really was delightful - some say having a dish done with corn in three ways would be a bit silly, but it works!!]

Olli was back to present us with the Null Alcohol Frei Riesling 2021 from the Moselle it is made traditionally then the alcohol is slow cooked away, the effect is a wine like taste, but as it is the sugar which turns to alchol in fermentation this drink is probably sweeter than my taste preference. However, it worked so well with the food I didn't notice the sugariness at the time. 

Jonathan again presented the next course which was a chanterelle mushroom foam with organic eggs and fresh black winter truffle from Australia (where it is winter at present - doh!!) grated over it and the addition of Enoki mushrooms. A dream set of flavours - chanterelles are one of my favourite mushrooms and they are so rich in this foam, the little enokis on the bottom give a salty kick and the egg and truffle get the palette singing with delight. I don't think I have tasted anything as intense as this, simple, fresh ingredients, but combined in a creative, unimaginable way, until they imagined it here!!

The next dish is served by Jonathan, it is Norwegian Hand Dived Scallops, Mangalitza pork, Japanese fermented chili and "Sweet&Sour" scallop sauce, the plumb scallop is fantastic, the little bits of salty pork act as a seasoning and the chilli, while mild to our regular chilli eating tastebuds, is a clear flavour which brings out the seafood delight of the scallop - I don't know what heaven is going to be like, but if it includes food like this I want to make sure I get there!  

Liam turns up with our next drink a Winter Apple and Oak drink which is designed to take one to Northern Finland where the apples grow slow, so are small and acidy. They are then sugared and squished through oak chips in a method which is used for making Chardonnay in Australia, it is like eating in a forest, though is sugar rich. 

Benjam serves us the next dish which is an amazing piece of Norwegian Halibut served with Rossini black caviar, foamed buckwheat and mixed herbs. Halibut, a strong fish anyway, carries the buckwheat flavour so well and the combinations are perfect for my palette, as I'm confident to expect from this amazing place and great young chef. 

The next course is again from Jonathan, this is Norwegian Langoustine cooked over wood chip with a Saffron and Citrus "Sabayon". I know how prized langoustines are for their slightly sweet, lobsteresque flavour. I always think they taste more like lobster than the prawns for which they are so often confused. The rich and creamy sabayon is sweeter than I would normally eat, but the hint of bitterness which saffron brings worked with the sabayon to draw out the deliciousness of the langoustine.

Olli was back to present us with the black cherry and chokeberry with black tea and cinnamon notes which was to go with our main course. Chokeberry, is an American berry, which isn't used very commonly in the UK, sometimes called aronia, it has a sharp, bitter flavour caused by the polypheonals which give it its dark colour. Along with the dark black cherry this is so tangy, it could only be used as an accompaniment to a meat dish. 

This course, at the heart of the meal, is presented to us by the boss himself - Eero Vottonen, he is not only head of this wonderful brigade of chefs but is the owner of the restaurant. 

He presented us with the Duck from Challans À La Palace - Challans is the home of the best of French ducks here it is served with an onion sauce and a separate mushroom sauce which both enhanced and celebrated the flavour of the lightly cooked duck. I'm afraid my photography is not as good as Eero's cooking.

The duck dish was served with Lapis potato bread - this is Lapis as in Lapland, and they use the only potatoes which grow north of the artic circle to make these breads which are made with mashed potatoes

these were served with a delicate Duck liver butter which had an amazing flavour, the rich liver with a tangy set of microherbs and microflowers - even if I didn't like the bread (which I loved) I'd have eaten it all as an excuse to use all the duck liver butter - wow, wow, wow my tastebuds are on overdrive.

Benjam returned to service the honey dessert, this was called a Celebration of Honey, which had a honey cream, a honey crumb and then if you hadn't had enough honey yet it was completed, in a way that made it look like angel wings with more honey in the form of honey ice cream!

I already felt I'd done a little overdosed on sugar with the amount of sweetness in the drinks, so I avoided this dish. Drew, being a hero, managed to eat mine and his own. So, I'll leave him tell you about this [Co-pilot's note: There were three or four different flavours of honey in this dessert, including a small trickle of honey in its own right. It was the nicest honey I have ever had. The foam tasted like honey, the ice cream like honey, the mousse like honey - but all had subtly different flavours and textures - it was delightful and I'd have it again.]

I was pleased to see that the restaurant offered a cheese course. we had three perfect cheeses to bring the meal (for me) to an end. The cheese was perfect a Blu di Capra, Goat’s blue cheese from northern Italy, a Tete De Moine, a delicious Swiss cow's cheese shaped like flowers and a Gruyere, a matured dark nutty sharp cows' cheese also from Switzerland. I could go into ecstasy about each of these cheeses, together they made a wonderful conclusion to the meal.

The person who served the cheese introduced the add-ons, thankfully they kept them free from the cheese, so I could eat what I wanted and leave the trimmings - there are clearly people in the world who want sweet flavours to mess with their cheese, not me!

Benjam returned with the desserts, asking which were our favourite courses. He noted that the two courses I'd chosen were both ones he had delivered and asked if it was the food of the chef that made them best - cheek! 😂🤣 

What he had come to serve was the amazing petit-fours that went with the espressos at the end of the meal. These were all sweets made from Passionfruit and Darjeeling Tea, Cep and Dark Chocolate Red Currant and Pine, Citrus and Sansho, Raspberry and Pistachio "Choux" and the house speciality a "Forest Cookie” Drew again, in hero made, ate all of them, so over to him [Co-pilot's note: At this point dear readers, even I was feeling a little over-sugared - yes it does happen. But you'll be glad to know I accepted the challenge and won - what did they taste like - sugar!!! To be honest they were distinctive, the little tart was delicious it had a very light pastry, the choux was incredibly delicate, filled with air and a light mousse on top.]

We had entered at 7pm and it was 11pm when we left, the time had gone by quickly without either of us noticing it,  The direct contact with the chefs, the amazing service from the rest of the team, all combined to feel like being hugged and cared for, more as friends than customers, what an amazing delight of an evening, a joyful and delicious meal.

We planned to catch the Metro back, as the trams weren't running this late, but after all that sugar (in the drinks for me and in the double desserts for Drew) we both felt we would be better walking back. We arrived at the Holiday Inn at 11.30pm and were soon in bed.