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.