Helsinki Day 1

Travel time again! As you can see from the title of the post, I spent some time even further up north in Helsinki! With a population around 600 000, I wasn't expecting it to be the most happening of places, but with the midsummer public holiday on the day after arriving, it was even less crowded than I expected. Having said that, Helsinki was...interesting. I'm not sure exactly sure what I was expecting but it sure presented me with things I wasn't expecting.

Such was when I saw this giant demon baby sculpture at Kamppi. 

I was also surprised to find quite a few art nouveau buildings in the centre, such as this one on Aleksanterinkatu

Wandering around, I ended up at Helsinki Cathedral

and got this lovely view over Senate square.

I'm also not sure what I expected from the interior but I remember thinking that it seemed both quite plain and yet also fitting. 

What's this?! A Melb tram outside the Athenaeum and main station (which I kept calling Hauptbahnhof, cos I'm German like that).

After a few hours, H finally touched down in the city and as we headed out to dinner, we discovered the difference in advice given to us by concierges of different hotels. Lots of places were closed early due to the impending public holiday and we ended up at Kapelli, on the end of the Esplanadi. Word to the wise, while not a cheap place to eat, I can highly recommend their 3 course menu deals! The staff and kitchen were accommodating enough to substitute the main on one of the offered menus for me and I was totally stuffed by the end of dinner.

I was craving fish and had a mixed fish platter as entree while H shows off his Asian credentials int he background. 

My main! Reindeer meatballs! Yes, I ate Rudolf! Also, I don't remember what my sides were but they were delicious. 

My dessert - Kapelli tart. Filled with berry mousse and covered with meringue, it was terrible - I told H not to eat it. MOAR FOR ME!!!

Also, despite being at dinner for a couple of hours, it was pretty amazing to see that the stories were true - 24 hour daylight!

Check it out - 10:48pm and all that light!

It was fairly cool in temperature though, a not uncomfortable 19C or so. So here I am riding the seal fountain at market square.

It probably would have been even warmer and not so dark if it weren't so overcast :/

Since he hadn't been there, we wandered over again for H to take some photos at the cathedral which was completely abandoned except for two guys drinking beer on the steps. Also, daylight at 11:10pm. 

As H and I were chatting to each other in English, we were a little surprised when the guys got up and came over and started to chat to us. It was the usual smalltalk - where were we from, how were we finding the city...then it kind of changed. These two guys started telling us that yeah, it must be a surprise for us to come to this city and find it completely abandoned. They explained that it was the midsummer holiday and that as a side effect, many people had gone to the countryside to celebrate, hence the desertion. They then said they were heading to a bar where they promised there would be other people and would we like to see it? As I usually do when two drunk guys invite me off to bar, we trotted off along with them.

They took us to a building with an incredible gothic revival exterior and interior...then said it was nice meeting us and went off into a room to find their friends! Errr.....well, thanks for bringing us there! We ended up chatting with a couple of guys from the US and Iceland who I think were also very happy to find some foreigners to whom they could speak. Tourism bringing people together win!