Another beautiful day! It did cool down towards the late afternoon but most of the day was great.
We’ve been to Helsinki before so we didn’t have to rush out for a tour. We had a comfortable morning and when we were ready, we headed for the shuttle.
We’re docked pretty far out of town but they ran a shuttle for 10 euro per person round trip. Kind of steep honestly. Back in the old days (pre-covid) ships would run shuttles for free or a very minimal cost. This, I think, counts as full cost, no subsidy from the cruise line at all.
The shuttle dropped us in the vicinity of Market Square a fun area with craft tents and food offerings right on the water. We bypassed that in the morning but came back later in the day.
We headed up to Senate Square, the seat of government, to catch the HOHO bus. We had no intention of actually hopping off the bus, we just wanted to view the circuit and decide if there was anything we wanted to go back to later.
We’ve taken HOHO’s in other cities and the narration can vary quite a bit. We did it in Glasgow last year and it was great, you got a real feel for the city and its history. This one in Helsinki, well it wasn’t awful, but could have been better. Maybe there just isn’t a lot to tell.
We did learn that the population of Helsinki is 600,000. In Finland as a whole the service industry is the number one employer with lumber right behind it. Helsinki gets 5 hours of sunlight during the winter and the Baltic Sea (at least parts of it) freeze over in the winter. The Baltic is practically an inland sea and this is why. The many ferries that come to Helsinki all year also act as ice breakers.
All the street signs are in Finnish and Swedish and every citizen has a right to be educated in either language depending on their family’s native language. Finland was once a Duchy of Russia and also belonged to Sweden at one point before becoming independent.
This picture is of the Sibelius Monument in Helsinki, full disclosure this is not my picture. We saw it today, as we did 14 years ago when we were here, but getting a good picture is tough because of everyone posing in front of it. Jean Sibelius was a Finnish composer who wrote Finlandia, a rousing patriot song for Finland at the time they were occupied by Russia at the turn of the last century.
At the end of the HOHO tour we went to see the Uspenski Cathedral (but didn’t go in). It’s pretty impressive. It’s Saturday so we saw a number of weddings going on.
We went back to Market Square to see what they had to eat. Turns out it was a lot of fish, which I like, but I’ve had a lot of it lately. We also saw a lot of reindeer products, sausage, hamburgers, and the like. Donor, Blitzen, Rudolph! We couldn’t do it.
The ship was leaving kind of early at 4:30 so we headed back just in time to avoid the chillier, windy weather.
Tomorrow we’re in Stockholm in a much better docking area, only 2km (1.2 miles) from the Old Town. Walkable for us but maybe not others. There is a shuttle for $20 (all day).
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