Finland: Helsinki

On our way to our northern lights tour in northern Finland, we stopped for two nights in Helsinki to explore the city a bit. I want to start by saying that the food there was delicious. Seriously, even the sandwich I ate in the Helsinki airport was better than any sandwich I've ever bought in Germany. Get yourself to Helsinki and eat.

On our first evening, we ate dinner at a mexican restaurant called Patrona. They made the best guacamole I've ever eaten. Aside from that, their Mexican food was a "fusion" so it wasn't straight-up Mexican but the flavors that they mixed together were quite tasty. And they had a lot of veggie options - all the restaurants we went to in Helsinki had good vegetarian and vegan options which was a nice surprise.

One our one full day in Helsinki, we just wandered the city for the entire day without a solid plan. Unfortunately, it was snowy, windy, and quite cold so we didn't feel like visiting any neighboring islands to see the fortress or other sites. Helsinki is definitely better to visit in the summer! But still atmospheric and fun in the winter for sure - just colder and darker and you can't go to the beach.

We started out our day by wandering toward the coast - we got lost for a bit but eventually found some water when we happened upon the Market Square. During the summer months this square holds a market and in October it has the annual herring market. In the weather conditions we were there in, naturally nothing was going on. The first two pictures below are looking out from the square, the third picture is Martin picturing the view, and the fourth and fifth pictures are of the square itself.



Next we wandered over to Senate Square. This is the cathedral that sits on senate square (the cathedral and square are basically the main tourist attraction in Helsinki). Nothing super exciting inside, but it was at least warm.



Martin climbing up the really steep steps to the cathedral:



Senate square from the cathedral:



And just a few more pictures of the streets of Helsinki (some of the shopping streets were definitely heated and that's why they're snow-free). We did wander into a few malls, an enormous department store, and some touristy shops. There are ample opportunities for shopping in Helsinki.



We ate lunch at Naughty Burger which supposedly has the best burger in Finland and was created by a Top Chef contestant who had dedicated a lot of his life to determining the best flavors for burgers. I ate a shroom burger and Martin got a classic naughty burger (beef). It was a fun and casual place, perfect for lunch. For dinner we went to a latin American restaurant called Maya. I know, we didn't eat any traditional Finnish food! We were looking for casual places and I wasn't in the mood for anything heavy or meaty (they like to eat bear and reindeer), and on this night we were tired from walking in the cold all day and Maya was next door to our hotel so it was an easy choice. Anyway, the pics below are from Maya. The left picture is our cocktails (Martin finally got a cocktail with raw egg white in it ... it tasted good but I can't wrap my head around drinking something with raw egg in it), and the second picture is of my dinner - Caribbean Tofu. It was delicious. Again, very impressed by the vegetarian options in Helsinki.