The problem with this cruise was that it was quite exhausting. After two days in St. Petersburg and a day in Tallinn, we could have all done with a day at sea to recover and get ready for days at Helsinki and Stockholm. We took a little easier in Helsinki for that reason.
Our ship left us in a very industrial-looking port of Helsinki. We were clearly far from the town, so we had to scramble a bit to figure out how to get into the main center of town. This involved a failed attempt to jump onto another cruise line's complimentary shuttle. Eventually, we found the right bus to take and, like a number of our fellow cruise members, squished our way onto one of the local buses. We got most of the way into town, and I think some of our fellow cruise people were frustrating the driver. There apparently was a big group of people who, after they paid, kept on bugging the driver while he was driving to get a discount. Clearly, this upset the driver, because he stopped, pointed us in the direction of Market Square, and kicked us all out. Good times.
It wasn't hard to find our way to Market Square from that point. Market Square is exactly what it sounds like. It's a giant market near the main port of town where the city's big market is. A lot of what we saw was more of a farmer's market, but Mia and my cookie radar went off and we got some delicious Finnish cookies that tasted kind of like a butter cookie, but with added cinnamon. From Market Square, you also have a very nice view of several very beautiful churches that we did not visit as well as the President's house (I think?). Unfortunately it was also raining at the time, so the area kind of looked gloomier than it did later in the day when it wasn't raining.
Our main desintation in Helsinki was the island fortress of Suomelina. It's a UNESCO World Heritage site and sounded all in all, pretty intense. Also, it looked cool in Mini Europe. In any case, to get to Suomelina required us to take a ferry to it. This involved some ping ponging at the port, as we tried to look for the right ferry boat that wasn't a rip off. My Rick Steves guide recommended taking the public transit ferry over, but we couldn't find that and ended up finding one that was comparable to what the price would have been.
As we were waiting to pay, we got to make a fool out of ourselves again. Chris was trying to empty his pockets of trash, but ended up throwing away 5 euro as well. He had to dig through the trash for a while in order to find it again. Fortunately, he, with Halmony and Umma's help, was able to find it. In the process, however, we got glared at by a number of locals. Even the seagulls were judging us.
The ferry eventually came and we all went inside. Chabba, Chris, Jimmy, and I all stayed upstairs for most of the trip. It stopped raining shortly after we left the port and the outside was beautiful. We passed by a series of islands that could only fit small houses. The sun was out. The sky was blue. Everyone else grumpily wanted to stay downstairs, so they missed out.
When we got to Suomelina, we essentially just wandered around and hiked around the island. According to my handy Rick Steves book, Suomelina was built by the Swedish to defend against the increasing Russian presence. Helsinki kind of grew around that fort's presence and eventually became the capital when Russia eventually got Helsinki.
Anyway, our hike around the island was fun and relaxing, although a bit tiring for some, and we got some great views of the Baltic Sea. There were cannons scattered everywhere. We spent a long time just sitting around in one of our contemplation breaks taking in the beautiful scenery. We could even see our ship from there. It was a pretty fun trip. We spent a few hours at Suomelina, which on a normal schedule would have been fine. On a cruise itinerary, however, it meant that we really did not have much additional time to explore the city and Chabba and I had planned out a lot more to see.
Before boarding back onto the ferry, several of us got Finnish soft serve. It was probably the best soft serve that many of had ever had. The vanilla was pretty good, but the chocolate was amazing. If you ever find yourself in Helsinki, go to Suomelina, if anything, for the soft serve. It's so good.
When we got back to the mainland, we had bought some really good sugar peas from the market. It was a lot sunnier at that point, so Helsinki looked a lot less gloomy than it had earlier in the day. Someone discovered wireless while Chris went off on one of his bathroom hunts, so we spent some time pretending to watch some Finnish orchestral group and trying to get the wireless to work.
Most of the group wanted to head back after that, so we split up into group. The majority of the group decided to go get some food, try some Finnish beer and head back to the ship. Chris, Chabba, and I wanted to visit the Temppeliaukio church, which is known as the church in the rock. We took Tram 3T up to the church, which was fun because that specific tram also allowed us to have a quick tour of other parts of Helsinki. Along the way, we saw things like the National Museum and ritzy shopping areas. That was an added bonus. We eventually got to the stop for the church and wandered around aimlessly on top of the church until we found the entrance, only to find that it was closed until 3:30 or something for some private function.
This church is a relatively famous one in Helsinki because it literally is a church in a rock. It was built on the inside of a rock. We only really had to wait around for about 10 minutes, which gave me some time to go get postage stamps that I needed and to ask the local tourist shop how to get back to our ship. When we got into the church, it was quite impressive. It was nice to just take a few moments to sit around, listen to the music they were playing, and to take in the church. What was most impressive about it were the windows that let in some really great natural light. It was a pretty cool stop and I'm glad we chose to skip the Finnish beer stop to see it (although I heard from Mia that the Finnish beer was some of her favorite from the trip so far).
Seeing as we did not have much time left at that point, we only stayed in the church for a short time before leaving. We went to the bus stop, but after waiting for like 10 minutes without seeing our bus, but seeing the 3T tram multiple times, we decided to just walk. It was only about a mile and a half away anyway, and we figured that it'd take just as long on the bus. So we walked and got to see a lot more of Helsinki by foot. After having so much rain in the morning, we got some gorgeous weather for the walk and got a much prettier view of Helsinki than in the morning.
It took us long than we had anticipated and we were very hungry by the time we got back. Unlike everyone else, we didn't have a feast of Finnish meat pies before returning to the trip and eating more. We grabbed some burgers by the pool and ran to our normal trivia event. We lost. I think it was one of our better performances, but we still didnt' win. Oh well.
At 6:30 ish, I decided to try something new and do the slots tournament. That didn't go well. It wasn't as exciting as I thought it would be. I thought that I would get like 15 minutes of free slot play for the $15 entrance fee. Unfortunately, I basically just pressed a button for five minutes straight and lost and slots. It wasn't even that fun. Oh well, now i know.
Chris and I went downstairs and played Scrabble and hearts with Chabba and Jimmy for a while. Got massacred at Scrabble by Jimmy.
We had dinner and then, afterwards, went to the casino for a while to watch Chris lose at Craps before going to bed. As we were walking in at around 11 after grabbing our casino cookies, Umma casually informed us that we had to be up by 5:30 for our Stockholm trip the next day. Surprise!
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