Technically, we were paying for both our dinners and breakfasts at one go. :P
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| Alighted at the Makasiini Terminal |
We decided to walk around the terminal to look see look see.
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| Hawkers selling pan fried seafood! |
As we were quite full from lunch at Estonia, we decided to give the seafood a miss since we would be coming back the next day to the same harbour to visit Suomenlinna.
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| Glorious berries! |
Took another tram and reached our accomodation for the night!
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| Which had a loft double bed! |
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| Lazy me kicked away my boots the moment I stepped in. |
Le fiance is the best. He did all the unpacking. :)
Walked around the shopping mall at Kamppi which was near our accomodation area and we passed by this restaurant that sold Singapore food.
Should have imagined Tex's face when I suggested we have that. Hahahaha!
I had massive craving for Italian food so pasta and risotto it is!
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| Portions were so big I took home half plate of risotto for the next day's breakfast :) |
We headed out pretty early the next day to catch some sun! Wanted to visit The Rock Church but it wasn't open when we reached there so we headed to a nearby park to bask in the sun in the cooling weather of 14 degrees Celsius. My favourite activity of the trip! Sun in air-conditioned like weather. BEST.
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| Find Tex! |
Can I just say, we were trying to detect WIFI and we realised they had WIFI connection named under the playground?! OMFG there were wireless connections almost everywhere we went in Europe. Didn't even need to get prepaid SIM cards for our entire trip. How awesome is that!
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| I spy with my little eye. |
We played "I spy with my little eye" while we lazed around. We're just random like that. :)
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| Goofing around |
Walked to The Rock Church when it was finally 10am!
Felt that it was just yet another nice architecture but I guess as compared to old architecture, I still prefer the old ones because they normally have stories behind it. Perhaps The Rock Church does have her own story to it but it doesn't pique my interest as much as I would like it too. =/
Moved on to walking around the city area. I think we walked about 3km to reach here. You wouldn't feel tired because the weather was so comfortable to stroll in, especially with Tex's hand in tow. Something we needed in a long long time - a stress-free and relaxed enviroment for quality time with each other. :)
Saw a street performing artist that played such nice music with glass bottles and creating a really bouncy ambience for the entire street!
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| Tex's attempt at a paparazi shot |
Walked past the Helsinki Cathedral on our way to the harbour!
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| It is also known as The Green-capped Cathedral |
Yay marketsquare food here I come!!!
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| SO SO SO SO YUMMEH!!! |
The seafood was soooo fresh and we loved every bit of our meal! The chips (fries) were sooooooooo crispy and tasty! The Salmon plate cost about €11 while the Sausage plate was about €8.90.
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| I think he see potatoes see until sian. |
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| Many of such stalls at Kauppatori Market Square |
After lunch, we took a ferry to visit Suomenlinna Fortress! It is now a heritage sight mainly for tourists and we were very surprised to know that Finland took part in WW2, in a very peculiar way. Haha!
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| Just a 20-minutes ferry ride. |
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| Hello love. |
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| I must be gobbling some food down (again). |
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| Reaching! |
And we soon arrived at the fortress! It's actually an island that is kinda separated by a small riverway.
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| An old military musuem. |
Tip: Please bring your own student pass if you look young enough for museum or attractions sight-seeing. The price differences can be appalling. For example, an adult pass could be €8 while a student pass could be only €3! You can save a lot of money! They are generally very encouraging when it comes to the youth visiting museums or attractions like that. :)
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| I captioned this photo on my IG as "What I do for a living". LOL |
Walked around the entire island. They have many small little attractions marked out on a map - just think of it as a large walking theme park and you can select and choose which attractions you want to visit. Many recommended visiting Suomenlinna Fortress in summer or autumn as the winter months could render scary experiences. Hmmmm.
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| Chanced upon a toy musuem which wanted to charge us €5 for admission! Decided not to go in, haha! |
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| Taken when I was comfortably lying down on the grass, eating cherries. |
Tex was so sweet to bring an old blanket for us to spread on the grass and lay down on the lawn. He thinks of things like that because he's sweet like that! I would just think of food and "take photo take photo!".
He's the live-in-the-moment kind of guy, haha.
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| It's back to this photo because apparently we crossed the bridge to get to the other part of the island. |
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| ♥♥♥ |
Autumn makes really colourful photos to look at. :)
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| The Helsinkian sky. No filter. |
Left the fortress around 4.30pm and took the ferry back again!
We felt that it was still too early to go back and rest up, so we went to Kiasma Museum, a contemporary arts musuem!
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| Outside Kiasma Museum. |
Had dinner at one of Italian restaurants where the mode of operations was like Marche - grab a card and use it then pay later. The pastas were of very large portions (again) and as usual, I couldn't finish and had to tabao (again!). :E
Went back and ended our day with packing as we had to leave for Prague via a morning flight the next day. I remember us crawling out of bed and scrambling down the stairs from the loft at an ungodly timing of 5am. Geez.
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| Goodbye Helsinki. |
Took the Metro to another station to wait for the airport bus! Good thing about Helsinki public transport is that they have a very accurate rendition of our Gothere.sg. The system even provides timing, several recommended routes and tranfers. All buses and trams are extremely pram and wheelchair friendly. Big spaces for such commuters with special needs to manoeuvre around without feeling paiseh or like an obstruction to other commuters. Something Singapore needs to learn from a developed country!
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| So early there were no people. |
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| Transport system based by guilt! No gantries! |
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| Awesome sandwiches in the airport! |
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| Couldn't resist buying a smoked salmon sandwich. |
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| Byebye! |
Since my Longchamp was being slashed when I was in Guangzhou earlier this year, I resolved to buying one when I knew that I would be travelling to Europe. Never did I know what after checking out Prague and Vienna, Helsinki Vantaa Airport remains one of the cheapest places to buy Longchamp bags (other than Paris itself of course)! Now I know! Hehehe.
Thanks for reading! :D
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