Last Leg: Helsinki

Better late than never!       Last stop… the capital of Finland!  After seven days of small town life we looked forward to a few perks of heading south to Helsinki. We took a five hour bus ride back to Rovaniemi and an hour flight to Helsinki. We were quite sad to leave Nellim, as aurora hunting got addicting, especially considering we landed several great nights of dancing lights.  We also left some new friends who we were fortunate enough to share quite a life experience with! We got up at 4 in the morning to prepare for our departure and of course the whole way to the bus station we are trying to spot one more sighting! Literally so addicting (not going to lie, we have looked up in the sky a few times out of habit at home) !!! The city offered something very important (especially to Scott), food variety!  The food at the lodge was great!  No complaints, except we were ready for some variety.  We were fed well with tons of local cuisine while in Nellim. So we decided on Mexican our first night there (and of course Hard Rock Cafe another night). Helsinki is a nice city on the southern tip of Finland.  A LONG way from Nellim, both geographically and culturally.  People actually dressed with style. Ha.  Coming from the land of layers and layers of thermals to survive, it was nice to see a city full of life and different clothing other than marshmellow suits.  Helsinki is located some 80 kilometres  north of Tallinn, Estonia, it is very common to take a ferry to Estonia for the day.  It is the world’s northernmost metro area of over one million people. It was still decorated for Christmas so it was still very festive! Helsinki has  a great shopping district, markets along the water, restaurants and bars.  But to be honest, after a week full of adventure we were looking forward to relaxing. We stayed in a very nice hotel located in the heart of the shopping district. It was equivalent to staying on 5th ave in NYC (not the hotel price though!).  A few nice long walks around, some enjoyable meals out and even a trip to the movies. The movie theater was quite interesting!  A converted theater from live performances into a movie theater.  Antique molding with a balcony overlooking the stage now equipped with a screen set behind a performance curtain.  It really made for a fun setting to watch a movie, with only one issue!  We knew that the movie would be subtitled, as this isn’t the first American movie we have seen overseas.  However the only movie we could see was The Good Lie.  The first 30 minutes or so was set in Sudan with the refugees speaking in an African dialect.  Well, the subtitles were in Finnish and Swedish.  So after ‘inferring’ what was going on for about a half hour, we enjoyed the rest of the movie in English as the setting movie to America. Although we missed the experiences of Lapland, Helsinki was a great way to see the rest of Finland and relax before we had to head back to the ‘real’ world. We had a unbelievable time on this trip, one that we will never forget!! We hope you enjoyed our journey with us!! Thank you all for your awesome comments and feedback!!!! Until next time…..

we got to the bus station at 6:00 a.m. our bus wasn’t until 8. We were stuck outside in the cold until 7:30! Ouch!

our street where the hotel was located

Park across street from hotel

outside markets on the bay