Woke up in Finland today, and it was good! It's summer, but the weather is nice and chilly - just the way I like it. People out in the street wear sweaters, jackets, scarfs and sometimes even beanies! It has been weeks since I've been able to say this, but I felt a little bit of cold today. ^_^ Can't possibly explain you how happy that makes me. Cold! Chilly! Windy! Walking in the sun when the sun isn't out there to burn you and smoke up your brain directly from your skull! Ah, the eternal joy and beauty of softly cool, mild weather.
Since we woke up a bit late - because it's a holiday, why on Earth would we wake up early? - we didn't grab the car to go discover the world outside Helsinki, so instead we put on our walking shoes and went to discover different places suggested by my boyfriend's lent guide book, which was let to him by a friend who has an antique bookstore. It's a blessing that Finland - unlike Hungary - hasn't changed much in the last 20 years, regarding touristic scenes. Be it as it may, it's a rather calm and clean city where you don't really see much people on the streets.
I'd love to recall all of the places we went to, but I'm not sure I can - not because they were so many, but because half of the time we were staring at the map and trying to find out where the heck do we were, or I was too busy being staved and cursing on everybody for not finding anything around me I could eat. So, here are some of the pictures I took - because as usual, I took like a trillion pictures, many of them about the same thing from ten thousand different angles.
We're staying at the Radisson Blu Royal Hotel, which is dead on the center of Helsinki... pretty much. Close to one of the metro stations (Kamppi), it's a pretty cool looking hotel, though the extras are quite expensive, to be honest. For instance, if you want to order room service, over the steep prices of the few goodies on the micro-menu, you must pay 10 € just for the room service itself. Then again, maybe that's just me, but I honestly don't remember ever paying any plusses for using the room service, which I have done, and not in one occasion. This alone takes the fun out of the comfort.
To add insult to injury, the minibar - stuffed with some mini drinks - has maxi-prices. I'm sure not paying 8 € for 40 ml of vodka! It's too freaking expensive! Specially because half a litter (500 ml) of a drink called Lapponia costs 10,50 € on the plane. But then, even if I were moved deeply by the thirst in me, I can't even raid the minibar, because the absolutely most important drink in the world, the one that has changed the Christmas for ever, the one that moves nations and it's all about smiles and friendship for ever, the one and only Coke is missing! NO COKE IN MY MINIBAR! Sure, there's a mini supermarket in the corner, but that's not the point. This is a big hotel from a big world wide chain of hotels, and it SHOULD have coke in the minibar. Oh, and I think there's no bottled water either, but that's not so important for me. Of course, maybe I could ring up the room service for a coke, except that I'd hate to pay some 14 € for one can of coke, when at the K (the name of the supermarket) I might get it for 2 €, and that's a difference that even a comfort loving person like me considers.
The first place where we stopped was the Temppeliauktio church (also known as Temppelikatu Kirkko, which means "Church of Rock"), a curious church built of rock and glass with a fabulous accustic. According to the book my boyfriend was reading, this church standed in the center of many controversies, since the building of this church swallowed so much money, that it could have been used instead to help the people of Biafra that were in war at that moment.
At the church a guy started playing piano, and the sound slid down from the domed ceiling down to the floor, really making us all feel as if the pianist were right next to us. I bet this is the kind of structure the gossip-hags of the office would love the whole building to have.
From there a long walk took us to the National Museum, the Finlandia House, the Parlament, the Sibelius Music Academy andall those places that are around. We didn't really enter them - though I've pictures - because the entrance prices are quite prohibitive. In the rest of Europe you normally enter museums for prices that range from free to 10 € - 16 € when there's something big or extra - but in here the entrance fees start at 30 €. That's the price of a crushed silk scarf! Just the two of us would have spent a fortune in museum tickets, so we decided to go, see them from outside and keep walking.
In his book, my boyfriend read that if you want to eat well, you had to look for places named baari or kahvila, but above all avoid the ravintola named ones because those are expensive. It turns out that baari means "bar", kahvila means "café" and ravintola means "restaurant". Damned. Well, I'm not going to spend my trip in Helsinki eating at pubs and fast food restaurants! Eventually we scored some food at a kahvila (it was the closest thing with food around), and then continued our journey.
Close to the Temppelikatu Krikko there was a souvenir store were I picked up a couple of postcards with stamps for my friends. Postcards in here are a bit pricy too, but to my surprise, you pay exactly the same to post them, no matter where you send them out. So I paid the same for a card to Malaysia as for a card to the States or Austria. The cards were dropped at one of these funny orangie-yellow boxes close to the Post/ Postal Museum, and then we followed our trip towards the trainstation, Rautatientori.
This train station is truly beautiful. We approached it from the side, where there's a square full of people. So, Helsinki isn't dead, it's just that people prefer to be close to the walking places, and that makes sense. The front part of the train station is sided by these giants holding huge glassballs, that are actually the lights of the place.
The place has plenty of places to eat fast or on your feet, but also a buffet-restaurant where you can sit down and eat, if you like, and you can use the toilets for 1 €, but that doesn't make them either clean or not-smelly. Stalls are tiny, stinky and not in the best shape of all. I've been in toilets at commercial centers that were cleaner and more comfortable than these. However, compared to this, the rest of the train station is surprisingly clean.
It's good that our hotel is so close to the center of the city (actually right in front of a metro station called Kamppi, over which there's a commercial center).
Well, that's all for today. I'll go to the reception now, see if I can get myself some more postcards, and then I'll convince my boyfriend to take a bubble bath with me ^_^.
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