Previous stop: Tallinn!

Taking the ferry across the Gulf of Finland. We had to say goodbye to our nice bus driver Igor.

As it was a nice day, the sailboats were out to play.

We had lunch on the ferry, which was a really extensive buffet including several kinds of herring. I think my favourite was a mustard-whisky sauce variant, though I liked the lingonberry sauce one too. The dessert buffet had Sea Buckthorn Cheesecake among other things, which was extremely strange – it’s kind of a tart orange berry, but it went well on cheesecake.

There was also a live musician playing covers in one of the cafeterias; he did some Norwegian-sounding stuff, and some Christian rock (blech), and some John Lennon.

Since the ferry ride is so short (only a couple hours), there was some trouble in the past with Finns coming across from Helsinki to get drunk in Tallinn (known as a result as ‘Helsinki’s nightclub’) for cheap – until they changed the liquor laws.

The ferry terminal

The ferry was bloody massive

Jokes were made about Finland’s government, although it looks more like something you’d find in SCP instead.

So… uh… I spent the night in jail.

The good news is the jail was converted to a 4-star hotel first.

It was sooo comfyyyyyy. The bathroom had a heated floor whaaaat

Walking to the harbour past old warehouses

Ah here it is

A monument to a Russian empress.

The local Russian Orthodox church.

I decided to walk down the west side of the harbour all the way to the southern end.

Russian Orthodox church dominating on the right, Cathedral dominating on the left.

Several islands in the harbour had charming big houses for rich people on them.

This one has a fort.

The terrain’s starting to remind me of BC.

Back by the downtown part of the harbour, a foamy fountain of a naked lady.

With seals!

The Cathedral.

A statue in front of the cathedral.

Went north up the other side of the Russian Orthodox church, as that was the place where the real boats were.

Began wandering around looking for cheap dinner. Eventually got a raspberry smoothie that tasted mostly of seeds. 0/10

The train station

I was informed of a choir and organ concert, and at first I was like “ugh” because my mental schedule had not had a concert, but then it was really good so I was glad I went. This organ was played, and it was wonderful! Unfortunately they did the entry fee weird – the concert was free, but the paper program was €10. I wish they’d just charged for the concert because my cheap butt was like “I don’t need a program” and afterwards regretted it.

Oh hei look Art Nouveau

The interesting buildings weren’t quite as frequent or as fantastical as Riga, but still nice. : )

The side stairs at the hotel were really neat.

It’s still light outside what is this I’m trying to sleep

Went off the next day to get a picture of this statue in one of the parks nearby, as it had been too crowded the evening before to get a nice picture.

Heading back north to see what my guidebook informed me was the oldest surviving wooden house in Helsinki. I’m assuming this sculpture is to honour the fishermen who worked here for centuries.

Whimsical, isn’t it

After all that walking, the house was not that impressive. I’m not sure what I expected.

Back at the train station, taking a picture of the building across from it.

The clock tower on the train station. I love the colour and the smooth feather shapes.

The Statue of the Three Smiths. Why they’re smithing naked I don’t know but it seems like a bad idea to me.

All these gorgeous old buildings full of modern fashion (and advertising). While the Baltics were relatively inexpensive, Finland was expensive again (as Scandinavia tends to be).

I’m not labeling most of these images as they were just taken wandering the downtown core. I walked all over, first to make sure I didn’t miss anything, and second to find the Helsinki museum (which turned out to be a little away from the core, near the Cathedral, whoops).

The Helsinki museum had some neat things, including panoramas of the city photographed at three different periods in the 19th-20th centuries.

I got lunch in the harbour market, and I got salmon soup. It came with way too much dill, but was tasty besides that! And wasn’t an overly gigantic pile of food like some of the plates they were offering, although they had some really good-looking fried fish. But I could barely finish the soup, a big plate of fish would have been too much. XD

I wandered the stalls here for a bit, looking for one last souvenir for my dad. Eventually I found some jam, which was exactly what I was looking for, but then it turned out that we can buy lingonberry jam at home lol and he didn’t end up liking sea buckthorn (tastes pretty good on ice cream imo). Oh well! We found out later that sea buckthorn has a very involved harvesting process – you can’t just pick the berries, they’ll pop, and the branches have giant thorns all over them. So you cut the branches off and freeze them and then pick the berries off that. And then make weird-tasting jam. There was also fur stuff and antler stuff and carven wood stuff and knitted stuff and metalworked stuff. Also a small farmer’s market with fresh produce.

Walked north to the National Museum of Finland, and on the way passed this super modern concert hall.

Here’s the museum! The exhibits began all the way back in prehistory, with stone axes and tools, moving forward through the Vikings. And then it seemed to skip a bit, or at least the theme changed wildly to Christian Finland. There were a lot of maps of how the border changed over the centuries, and there were many artifacts from the 17th-18th centuries, including furniture, household tools, big shiny medals given to noblemen. In the modern history section, there was a video on how much Finns looove coffee (a lot, apparently – the video suggests coffee can bring world peace), and a display of sauna spoons people had handcrafted and donated. Also did you know Princess Leia’s necklace in ANH was designed by a Finn? I did not! They also had a song by Nightwish that you could listen to (and other Finnish bands).

birb

The dinner that evening was very fancy, in the basement of the hotel, and at the end of it they brought out the keyboard and started playing old songs. Some of the Czech people in the group sang some Czech songs! They were really good.

This picture was taken at the airport at about 4am. My flight didn’t leave until 6, but I had to get up around 2:30 as it was a long drive to the airport even with no traffic.

Had to go to another wing of the airport in… I think this was Munich? Maybe? Anyway there was a tram down there to get me there iirc. I just thought the view was neat.

The flight home was pretty much the same as the flight there, but I didn’t bother trying to sleep this time – I could sleep when I was home. Instead I watched three Marvel movies – Captain America 2, Captain Marvel, and Into the Spiderverse – and was given the impression that in the Marvel universe, no one has bones, only rubber.

Vancouver airport’s changed since I last saw it, but it looks really nice now. And customs was almost as fast as Europe now. I still don’t know how to answer the questions about food (they’re so weirdly specific? but in such a way that I don’t know what the correct answer is?) but anyway I made it home on the second last ferry and all was well.

Thanks for reading!