SWEFIN Day 6 - Helsinki 🇫🇮

Hei kaikki - Barry here. A combination of our late arrival into Helsinki and jumping forward another time zone meant that we were both dead to the world when my alarm went off at the comparatively late hour of 8:30am. No hotel breakfast here so sustenance came in the form of a couple of cinnamon buns kindly obtained by Ellie.

We readied ourselves for the day and I set about with the now familiar task of downloading the local tram app for our phones and setting up day passes so we could get around and about with ease. We then headed across the street to our nearest stop and were soon on our way north through the city to our first destination, Linnanmäki - our second theme park of the trip.

The park itself is completely non-profit organisation and all funds are donated to a Finnish children’s charity. We’d ordered our wristbands in advance which we needed to collect from the ticket office, which strangely was located towards the back of the park rather than near the entrance as you’d expect. Ellie wasn’t feeling her usual bright and breezy self due to the lack of a proper shower last night or this morning (the hotel had this fixed by the time we got back) so once we’d collected our wristbands she definitely deserved first pick of the rides.

Her choice was Vuoristorata, a classic wooden coaster with an onboard brakeman in a similar vein to the one in Great Yarmouth. Sadly after waiting in line for it to open for a while it seemed her luck was out as the ride was down. Well at least that’s what we assumed, basically after standing in line for a while a guy came out of the ride and yelled something in Finnish, after which everyone else in the queue left so we followed suit.

Our second choice was Taiga which is the park’s main new attraction. It’s a huge coaster with multiple ‘launches’ (similar to Helix from earlier in the trip) built into the side of a rocky grey hill that forms one side of the park, and one that I was very excited to try. Ellie is unlike me and doesn’t obsessively research every aspect of the trip in advance, so was taken by surprise, thankfully in a good way, when we blasted out of the station and up a steep hill almost without warning. We both felt a lot more awake after that to say the least.

After this it was back to the wooden coaster which was now up and running, and just as rickety and bouncy as expected. Bonus points for having a wall of photos of all the ‘drivers’ as you entered, ours was called Teemu, although he seemed to have regrown his hair and gained a lot of weight since leaving Carrow Road!

It was then time for some calmer rides including the Ferris Wheel and Haunted Hotel. At least we thought the Haunted Hotel would be calm, I love a lame, janky old haunted house but this had some surprisingly effective jump scares, including a moment where both of our chairs jabbed us in the back (if you’ve experienced the ‘It’s Tough To Be A Bug’ show at Animal Kingdom in Florida then you’ll be familiar with the effect). Later in the day we saw some traumatised children being comforted by their parents after experiencing this ride, thumbs up to Linnanmäki for showing no mercy.

We spent the rest of the morning hopping on to more coasters with a quick ice cream break for Ellie in between. The weather had alternated between bright sunshine and quick showers throughout the day but when it turned into a real downpour we decided to stop for lunch. We found a food hall containing two separate restaurants and each picked our own cuisine, I went for the curry while Ellie grabbed a pizza (they were happy for you to have food from either at the same table).

When my food arrived the  waitress treated me to a long monologue in Finnish which I politely smiled and nodded along with as my knowledge of this language presently only extends to ‘thank you’. Finnish is apparently the hardest European language to learn and is completely unrelated to the other Nordic languages, which all have some degree of mutual intelligibility. It was also supposedly the inspiration for Elvish in Lord of the Rings so you can stick that in the fun fact file. It looks absolutely chaotic in written form and is just the same when spoken, albeit quite musical.

After a bit of a battle locating our waitress to pay up (Ellie’s suggestion that it was the ‘blonde one’ didn’t really help narrow things down in this part of the world!) we hit up a final couple of rides before moving on from the park and back towards the centre of city. On the way to the tram stop we diverted to see the Olympic Stadium from when Helsinki hosted in 1952. Although the tower was impressive, of more interest to me was the stadium next door where we could hear a game taking place, and and I spotted a hill where others seemed to be gathered for a free view into the ground. Checking the scoreboard I could see that we were watching Finnish champions HJK Helsinki at home to opponents FC Lahti. HJK were 1-0 down and even during the couple of minutes we saw I could tell Lahti would be very happy with the result based on the amount of blatant time wasting I witnessed.

I would have stayed and watched the rest of the game but the drizzle was getting heavy and I didn’t want to test Ellie’s patience! Instead we hopped on a tram to our next destination, Temppeliaukio Church. This was evidently quite a popular tourist destination as when we arrived there were clearly visitors from all over the world. The building is almost invisible from the outside as it is bored into and under a rocky hill, so when you enter the main part of the church the high ceiling is actually at ground level outside. It was a very unique, round room with amazing acoustics and a peaceful place to rest for a few moments.

We then made the short walk back to the hotel via a shopping mall as it was the home of Helsinki’s retail tribute to Finland’s most famous export, the Moomins. I think Ellie would have bought half the store if she could but was able to exert great discipline and only came away with a couple of purchases.

We’d intended to head out for a meal this evening but Ellie was feeling particularly weary, so after a well deserved shower we decided to call it an evening in aside from a quick excursion out for me to pick up some fast food for the both of us for an easy dinner. Kiitos kun luit!