Helsinki

Last weekend Aniek and I went to Helsinki, the beautiful capital of Finland. We left home around 5.30 in the morning. Way to early on a saturday morning, but we had to be on time for the bus to Helsinki. This morning the weather was so bad, it was raining, a lot of wind and really cold.

I think it was about 8.30 we arrived in Helsinki, so it isn't such a long trip from Turku. Good music, a bit of sleeping and candies also helps to make these ours not so bad. Luckily the weahter changed when we arrived, no rain and even a little bit of sun.

The first thing we did when we arrived was getting a drink at Starbucks, always a great start of the day. So after we finnished our starbucks we walked to the city. It was quite early so it was quiet and peacefull in the city. I fell in love with the city immediatly, all those beautifull buildings, the lovely small parks, it was just perfect.

Before we went to Helsinki we looked up some highlights of the city and we got some advice from colleagues. The churches here are worth a visit. you have a lot of them in Helsinki and we visited two of them.

At first we visited the Helsingin tuomiokirkko, the cathedral of Helsinki. It was a beautiful, big, white cathedral and in front of the cathedral you have the big senate square, which is also surrounded

by beautiful buildings and have a statue in the middle.

The other one we visited is the Uspenski Cathedral. This one is a bit smaller but also really beautifull.

Also a fun thing to do when you are here is to go in the ferris wheel. It is close to the harbour and

it will give you an great view over the city.

Another highlight are the markethalls. Helsinki has three, they all have a lot of restaurants and other market stalls in there where you can buy delioucious cinnamonbuns and ofcourse other food. If you ever come to Finland, you should try a cinnamonbuns, cause they are really good!

After the sightseeing it was time for some shopping. With a lot shoppingmalls Helsinki is the perfect place for a day full of shopping. And when we had spend enough money for the day, it was time to find a nice dinnerplace. Well that is quite hard with so many restaurants. But on our way we bumped in to some kind of ¨foodfestival¨. It was like a marketsquare full of stands with food all from different countries. We tried a ¨Trdelnik¨, it's a typical Czech kind of pastry. It's made from rolled dough that is wrapped around a stick, then grilled and topped with sugar and cinnamon.

We still had to find a dinner place, we wanted to try sushi. Actually we both don't like it, but we just wanted to give it a try. Well that wasn't the best decission of the day, but we had a lot of fun. Probably we annoyed a lot of people, we had a laugh and therefor almost forgot about the sushi.

After dinner we went back to the ¨foodfestival¨, cause we hadn't seen everything of it and we searched for one other thing, real Dutch cheese. Almost lost the hope they would be there, but then we saw it. A big stall with Dutch flag, and yes sold cheese. I think we've never been so happy seeing a cheesestand and we immediatly know we wanted to buy some cheese. While discussing which one we wanted, we heard someone talk Dutch to us. We were just suprised, even though I actually knew the were Dutch. We were just happy that we could Dutch to someone else. We tastedsome cheeses and bought 2 and they are delicious. At that moment we both were the happiest persons on the world.





It had been a long day, so we went to our hostel, the first time for both of us to sleep in a hostel. It was a nice hostel, with a big kitchen and a place to relax. We slept on a 8-persons room, not really my thing, cause some people like it to make a lot of noise and play with lights around 6 a.m. But we had a place to sleep and for students like us, it's a good cheap option.

So we left the hostel quite early, ready for another day. It was beautiful weather, the sun was shining all day long. We bought some delicious pastries and a ticket for a boattrip to the little islands close to Helsinki. The first stop was at Vallisaari, We just walked around there and enjoyed the good weather and our pastries. There were some great viewingpoints where you, at one point could look all across the ocean, and on the other side you could see Helsinki.

                                                                 

 

We got back on the boat again and saild to the island Suomenlinna. Here we also just walked around a little bit, and got a drink. We sat outside, probably catching the last sunrays we will see in a while. After walking around here we got back to the boat and back to Helsinki.

It was almost time for dinner so again we searched for a nice place. This time we got to a kind of mexican place. We had some delicious nachos and a pizza, what we were craving for all weekend.

So almost 46000 steps further, it was time to go to the bus and go back home. And I have to say Helsinki stole my heart a little bit this weekend.



Puhua myöhemmin

Emma