Helsinki, Tallinn, and Riga...oh my!

The five days I was in Eastern Europe definitely flew by. We spent one full day and a night in Helsinki, a 1.5 days and 2 nights in Tallinn, and 1 day in Riga. As I said several times that week, we definitely "maximized our time".

I'll start with Helsinki...

Anna and I started out by flying from Copenhagen to Helsinki on Wednesday morning. I left my place around 7:45am and met her at the airport's metro stop at 8:15am, give or take a few minutes since I don't have a phone and couldn't call her when I got there.

We took off at 9:40am and our flight was practically empty, we each had our own row which allowed us to stretch our legs...too bad the flight wasn't longer than an hour.

Our spacious rows

We arrived at the Helsinki airport around 10:30am. We bought a 24 hour public transit pass (that we used for the bus, tram, and ferry rides) took a bus to the city center and then went straight to Tourist Information where we picked up maps and guides. Then, we took a tram to Eurohostel, where we would be sleeping for the night.

Helsinki city center

We dropped our things off at the hostel and then went to lunch at an Italian chain restaurant called Vapiano. Weeks before, Anna was raving about this place. It was started in Germany and Anna always eats there when she was at school and home. She found out that there was one in Helsinki and she wanted to take me there so I could try it. It's unlike any chain restaurant I've been to at home for countless reasons:

• When you first enter, you get a card (that looks like a gift card) which you scan when you've ordered and then you pay the hostess the amount shown on the card when you're leaving.
• There are different stations where you order food. There are pizza, pasta, and salads/antipasti stations. They also have a dessert cafe where you can order coffee, tea, and cake.
• They make their own pasta in house
• They have basil in potted plants at all of the family style tables that you can help yourself to and put in your dishes.

After we ate, we followed the "Enjoy the Smell of the See" self-guided walking tour that we found in one of the brochures we picked up at the tourist information. We only got through half of the 6km walk because it started raining cats and dogs. We saw the most important sites during that first half though.

Here are some of the highlights of the tour:

At the harbor

Tsarina's Stone, Helsinki's first public monument

Helsinki City Hall

Havis Amanda Statue, each year on 4/30, university students place their student cap on top of the statue

Old Market Hall, which houses 30 delis as well as restaurants and cafes.

Helsinki Cathedral, City Hall, and Old Market Hall

German Church

Uspenski Cathedral, the largest Orthodox cathedral in Western Europe.

After our tour, Anna and I took the tram to a coffee shop where we dried off and warmed up with a tea. We picked up some food at a grocery store and headed back to the hostel to eat.

Downtown Helsinki

We called it an early night because we planned on waking up early the next morning to take the ferry to the Sea Fortress, Suomenlinna.

We woke up at 7am to catch the 8:20am ferry to the island. Luckily, while we were there, it wasn't crowded at all and it didn't rain. Double bonus! Anna and I even got filmed by a Google Earth guy riding his bike with the equipment on the back. It's pretty neat that Google acquires images of small islands such as Suomenlinna, that only have 850 residents.

The view of Helsinki from Suomenlinna

Where soldiers and their families used to live

Suomenlinna Church

Noah's ark: The first multi-story building in Finland

No, we did not go down there

The sand banks and the guns of Kustaanmiekka: constructed by the Russians at the end of the 19th century

King's Gate, the symbol of Suomenlinna built between 1753 and 1754

We left the island a few hours later and it was just in time, because it really started to rain hard on the ferry ride back. Once we docked, Anna and I took the tram back to the downtown area, had a warm drink and then decided we would take the 2:30 boat to Tallinn. By this time, it was about 11:30am. We quickly went to check out Helsinki Cathedral.

Helsinki Cathedral (the outside looks better than the inside)

Senate square

We took the tram back to the hostel, picked up our things in 3 minutes flat and then headed back on the tram to the downtown area where we had lunch at...Vapiano. The food is good and cheap, so why not?

Afterwards, we walked to a bus stop near the train station and took a bus to the port where we would be boarding the cruise ship to Tallinn. It would take us only 2 hours to get there and we were on this really nice, comfortable ship with everything you can imagine. And we weren't even staying the night on it. Anna and I napped most of the time and were refreshed when we landed in Tallinn around 4:30pm.

The cruise ship that brought us from Helsinki to Tallinn (sorry it's so hard to see, took this as we were leaving)

Next entry: Tallinn!