Yep, we are back in Europe! It might surprise some to see that we left Seattle when the summer wasn’t over yet. We love to be in Seattle all summer, but we also like to be warm all year. Helsinki is about the same latitude as Anchorage, Alaska, so we wanted to see Finland and the Baltic countries while it was still warm. We so we left America on July 31st, instead of waiting for Seattle’s weather to cool off . The weather for our week-long stay was around 75 degrees most days, so it worked out perfectly. We had a beautiful 8 days in Helsinki and really enjoyed the long hours of sunlight.
Jet lag was again tough for us and seems to be getting worse for us as we get older. We had a direct flight, slept on the plane and had an afternoon arrival but we still had issues waking up at 2am for several days. Luckily we will be taking a cruise home from Europe to the US in October so we hope to avoid these issues on the way back.
We did have enough time in Helsinki to see the sights though our jet lag haze. We took a “free” walking tour the first day to understand the culture, history and to see the Finnish architecture. Another day we took a short ferry to the old fort on Soumenlinna Island. One day, we had a museum day and saw a city history museum and the really cool Contemporary art museum. We also had a day to walk around another island and see the Seurasaari Open Air museum.
I did have a bike rental day. I see so much more of a city and the surrounding nature on a bike that I need to make a priority to do this more. Bike lanes were everywhere and always protected away from cars. The city also has a great network of streetcar trams that often were coupled with bike lanes. It reminded me a lot of Copenhagen, Stockholm and Amsterdam. Northern European cities are still way ahead of the rest of the world in cycling infrastructure.
We had enough time in Helsinki to take a bus day-trip to the smaller town of Porvoo – the second oldest city in Finland. It was nice to see an older Finnish village even though it has become a bit of a tourist stop. The old town had older wooden buildings along the river as well as other older Finnish architecture along cobblestone streets. We strolled the tourist shops and bought our share of chocolate and licorice.
We were also eager to be back in Europe to get back to our European food. Like most countries, Finland has its specialties. We tried reindeer, salmon soup, meatballs, and a lot of pickled vegetables. The country specific pastries and bread are a big reason that I find it hard to lose weight in Europe. We did a lot of walking this week so somehow I felt better about trying everything.
We really enjoyed Helsinki and Finland and could see ourselves spending some more time here. There are a lot of biking trails that I missed. The downsides of this country is the many months of really cold weather. I really would only want to visit in July and August. Helsinki is also not the cheapest country in Europe, but we found that it didn’t blow our budget too much. Luckily we have some more affordable places coming up in the Baltics and Poland. Our next journey is a ferry ride to another new country for us – Estonia!