Today I had a chance to take the tram into Helsinki, though I did hit for about 40 minutes with Debra Schmidt from GBR who asked me to hit this morning.

I took the tram into town midday. It’s about a 30 minute plus ride into town since I was going all the way to the harbor. I first was going to Suomenlinna, a group of eight small islands about 10-15 minutes by boat from the harbor. The basic Helsinki day ticket will get you on the boat without additional cost. Suomenlinna is popular as a picturesque picnic site, and I saw many people having a picnic on this sunny, breezy day. Six of the islands are fortified. It’s a UNESCO world heritage site. About 900 people live on the islands, which have many restaurants, a small grocery store, a church and post office and a backpackers’ hostel. It was packed on the boat ride over. From the boat you have a good view of the harbor, the Ferris wheel and the two main churches, the white Helsinki Cathedral (which was undergoing some restoration, and which was built in 1852 as a tribute to Tsar Nicholas I of Russia), and the brown Uspenski Cathedral, the largest Orthodox Church in Western Europe. I had visited them not long ago so just took photos from the harbor.

I stayed about an hour, walking along the water and people and boat watching. I had a good view of the harbor on the return trip. After returning to Helsinki, I wandered through the tourist market which had many souvenir vendors, and many fruit and vegetable vendors, selling local berries, chanterelle mushrooms, tomatoes, and a few potatoes. There were a couple of prepared food vendors, mostly selling burgers and fried seafood…you could get a reindeer burger there.

After leaving the market I walked up the main shopping street, visited a Marimekko store (they are everywhere!), and the Stockman’s department store, which had a grocery store in the basement. It was interesting…it had about 6 aisles of sweets, a similar amount of space for cheese and butter, but only 1/2 aisle of chips, a lot of prepared food, not a huge amount of fruit and vegetable real estate, the normal large bread/pastry (self serve) department, and lots of licorice.

I came back to the hotel after that. The tram was packed when I got on, but pretty empty when I got off. All in all it was a nice day out and relaxing. Another travel day tomorrow…now to fit everything into my suitcase!