Day 501: Exploring Helsinki

Gorged ourselves at the breakfast buffet (already included), then packed up and departed the ship after docking at around 10am. After a few ticketing issues we arrived at central station and dropped our bags in a locker, since we couldn't check in to our Airbnb until around 4pm.

Had a good time wandering around Helsinki which seems like a really interesting city - lots of cool buildings to look at! Again it's not an old city city, it was founded in the 16th century so it has that real feeling of Enlightenment design - straight wide streets, 90 degree intersections and the like.

Saw the typical sights including an underground church which was quite cool, the parliament and various other buildings too. All in all a very enjoyable day.

Also quite fun to see we'd arrived on the day of the Pride parade - sort of like Mardi Gras I guess but more about just marching and enjoying it than people performing. We stood and watched the parade for a while and it felt like the whole city had turned out!

Back to central station where we picked up our bags and got the tram about 20 minutes north to our apartment. It's a large and lovely one-bedroom apartment, probably the largest we've stayed in for months. Very sad we're only here for two nights!Read more