Finland & Estonia

With a week of annual leave to book, and a fairly limited budget, we decided to tick off two more European countries, Finland and Estonia.

We had a painfree drive to the long stay car park at Stansted, a speedy bag drop and reasonably quick journey through security, although the security officer did pull my bag and decided to balance my beloved fuji on the edge of the luggage bin rather than place it somewhere secure. Fortunately incident free, but it had me wincing until she forced it back into my backpack.

There was a short wait to use the ‘Escape’ lounge after registering our details, but not too long, we made it to the other end of the terminal then had to return to the lounge at a brisk pace to not lose our 10-minute table reservation window.

The assigned table wasn’t the greatest, but we were happy to have made it in after they’d closed it the last time we’d visited Stansted. The food and drink on offer were pretty good compared to some of the lounges we’d been in recently and it was pleasantly quiet despite being a larger lounge. The people on the table next to us must have been competitive eaters, bringing back at least a dozen chicken drumsticks and at least a kilogram of cheese. We eagerly waited to see what they’d enjoy for desert, only to find ourselves disappointed that they’d brought back one apple to eat which they popped straight into their bag.

I’d enjoyed a spiced rum and coke, gin and tonic and glass of sparking ‘rose’ wine which I think you could liken to a mixture of cheap juice and lambrini. No wonder the lady at the bar warned me it’s, ‘quite a sweet wine’!

Our flight was without delay, although I did unfortunately drop and break Tarnya’s bottle in the queue. This was really disappointing because she had only bought the bottle the day before so I did feel awful, especially decanting her water into my terrible fold down bottle knowing that the silicone/rubber smell of my bottle is likely to offend her senses.

Arrival into Helsinki provided us with a new experience – having sat at the rear of the plane we disembarked – but found all passengers at the front entered the terminal using an airbridge whilst we waiting for a bus to take us. I’m not sure who made it first, the bus seemed to drop us miles away, but there was no queue at security for us and our suitcase was available to collect from the belt as we walked across to it. We couldn’t have timed it more perfectly.

There was a beautiful black labrador at the customs exit and I was desperate to be inspected by them, but sadly they were preoccupied with somebody else so I had to made do with my eyes instead. Probably for the best, there were enough signs to say don’t disturb the working dogs and I should really know better.

Travel into Helsinki was ridiculously easy, we walked straight out into arrivals, straight towards some train symbols, down two very long escalators with opera music booming and a projector displaying said opera.

At the end of the second escalator we found two platforms, both with trains planned to Helsinki with one arriving in 2 minutes, giving us just enough time to purchase our tickets before boarding and leaving. The train tickets were on 4.40 EUR each and apparently we could use them for our tram to the hotel. Is this the easiest and cheapest airport to enter a capital city from ever? It’s definitely up there for us.

After 30 minutes we arrived in Helsinki and headed towards the number 9 tram to take us to our hotel, Hotel Ax, which is in the Jätkäsaari district. We had 5 minutes walk in the airport, a 30 minute train journey, 5 minute walk, 10 minutes waiting and finally 10 minutes on a tram, practically to the door of the hotel.

The hotel looked really interesting from the outside, featuring a large metal dragon, striking white lights, and a couple of shiny silver signs. After checking in we headed up to our room and enjoyed a hot shower each to wash away the post-flight grubbiness. Once refreshed and relaxed we headed to a local Lidl and picked up a couple of snacks and drinks to see us through the evening.

Day 2 – 09/11/2025

With it being Sunday, and knowing most things are closed early on in the day, we decided to rest until a little later, 10am before enjoying the included breakfast. The breakfast was fairly impressive for something that hadn’t added any cost to the room rate, but neither of us were particularly hungry so we didn’t eat too much, just enough to fuel ourselves for a walk around the city. 

We decided to walk into the city so that we could get a feel for our location and spot any less-trodden sights en route. I was tempted by a Ryde scooter, downloading the app and setting up payment, but Tarnya veto’d it for now, at least until we could understand the rules of using them around the city. We did pick up a couple of red bulls to help energise ourselves, but found that they were too cold to drink straight away.

We spotted Kauppahalli Saluhall on our way so walked through, hoping to see an outdoor market, some interesting restaurants and different cuisines, but with it being the start of winter, and still early-ish on a Sunday, not many things were open and there were no stalls outside at all. After this brief visit, we first found ourselves in Punavuori district, then we walked on to St John’s Church (Johanneksenkirkko) where we took photos of the local wildlife – sparrows, blue tits, pigeons and crows before peeking into the church through the inside glass doors where a live sermon was taking place. 

We had a little look around the Design District (Ullanlinna), observing some more interesting buildings and shops compared to where we had walked from, but not seeing much to tempt us in on our initial view.

We walked on towards Esplanadi Park, stopping to take a photograph of Erottaja Rescue Station which I assumed was a police station due to the amount of police cars outside, but now I realise is a fire station which we could have visited. The building was quite striking, especially the contrast of the red bricks against the faux castle-looking building opposite.

Our red bulls were warmed enough to enjoy in Esplanadi Park, sitting for a few moments and enjoying the people watching experience before walking past Havis Amanda (not switched on), Helsinki City Hall and into Market Square (Kauppatori) where Tarnya enjoyed a Vietnamese coffee and we both enjoyed swearing at the high prices of the fairly cheap looking goods for sale there. There were some good magnet contenders however so I might find myself back there later in the week!

We then passed the Presidential Palace, SkyWheel, marina and Old Customs House before deciding to double back on ourselves and head up to Uspenski Cathedral (Upsenskin Katedraali) rather than explore a very quiet looking Katajanokka district. Entrance to the cathedral was 5 EUR each so we took a few moments to sit and enjoy the warmth and nice scents.

We did a slight detour to see the Finnish House of Nobility, then walked across to Senate Square (Senaatintori) and into Helsinki Cathedral. A nice couple asked for a photo so I took a few and they repaid the favour before we climbed the steps. There was a tour group outside the cathedral with the guide telling their group that the orange building below us is the only restaurant in the city of Helsinki serving bear meat. Not sure we fancy that!

Wandering towards the Central Railway Station (Rautatiesema) we travelled along Aleksanterinkatu seeing some interesting shops and considered where we might visit next. I was gagging for a drink so we popped into a shopping mall where I picked up another red bull and a capri sun and guzzled them both. I really fancied a terrible hot dog so we popped into the train station and shared a jalapeño and onion hot dog before entering the Ateneum Art Museum where we enjoyed a couple of hours of viewing artworks.

After that we popped the nearest supermarket and collected food and drinks for the room where we planned to retire for the day. I did however get a sudden urge to eat cheap supermarket ready-to-eat pizza so we popped up for an unsuccessful mission, finding all three nearest shops had either sold out or didn’t stock it. I will need to eat pizza another day.

Day 3 – 10/11/2025

Tarnya woke up feeling quite rough today so skipped breakfast, enjoying a little longer in bed instead. When I returned to the room we got ready to leave, although I did lose one of the room cards so caused us a little delay. We were headed to Korkeasaari Zoo today which looked to be simple enough based on the map. I thought we were going to a bus stop, only realising it must be a metro train when we were on top of the ‘bus stop’ in between roads.

Korkeasaari Zoo is on a picturesque island in within Helsinki, is one of the northernmost zoos in the world and also one of Finland’s most popular tourist attractions. The zoo itself is fairly small, with approximately 150 species, but after spotting they cost a euro less and have more reindeer than Nuuksio National Park (5/6 of them vs a dozen or so?) I was keen to pay them a visit. The start of our visit was quite funny, we didn’t see any animals for a good 20 minutes or so, but once we passed the first area devoid of animals we did start to see some. There wasn’t much to note of in the zoo, other than if you go in November you might be the only people there, we only saw one other couple in the amazon experience and a father and son near the big cats.

After we left the zoo we headed back into the centre via tram and then metro again, at the second stop on the metro a man got on board, slammed his bag down on the seat opposite us and shouted. I hopped up and encouraged Tarnya to follow me to the other end of the carriage. The guy looked totally unhinged and others followed us too, switching carriages at the next stop. He was the first person we’d seen act this way in Helsinki which is a contrast to London where you might expect someone like this on every few journeys.

It was getting late so we refuelled with red bulls and a few snacks from the supermarket. In the previous supermarket when I’d picked up some baked goods I had to weigh them, select the quantity and stick printed labels on the bags. I did the same in this supermarket, but the prices seemed too low. When I translated the labels later I realised I’d apparently purchased two types of pears and a banana instead of a pizza slice, meringue and cinnamon bun. Whoops! I had credited my cans/bottles there and not been able to spend the money due to being at the wrong till so I don’t feel too guilty about the situation.

We returned to the hotel, expecting to pop back out for dinner later, but found ourselves too full after the snacks so spent the remainder of the evening in the room.

Day 4 – 11/11/2025

I wasn’t too sure what time we needed to be up this morning. We had booked the 9am ferry to Tallinn and the ticket says we should be no later than one hour prior to departure, but also that check in closes 30 minutes prior to the departure time. It also said we should arrive 45 minutes prior on the app. Either way we were set to have a fairly early morning, with breakfast at 7 and an aim to get to the ferry a full hour before. We’d accumulated some empty cans and bottles which I thought we’d be able to drop at Lidl on the way to the ferry, but we had eaten our breakfast and walked too quickly, arriving 30 minutes before it opened so we had to just recycle them and miss out on the return monies.

We arrived at the port at 7:45 and walked straight through into a reasonably quiet terminal, finding ourselves a decent seat to wait on and to watch out for the ferry to arrive at 8:15. We boarded shortly after its arrival, struggling to carry the suitcase up the stairs, but with no other good option as the lockers were not large enough for this bag and I didn’t want to risk not getting a seat by waiting on the lifts. I needn’t have worried though, plenty of seats were available in the section we went to first. I did however manage to nearly steal someones table, they were hovering around but I thought they were at the next one across until they made it clear they were planning to take the seat I started to sit in. Doh!

I had a brief wander around the boat whilst Tarnya had a short snooze, that was until a live band started playing. Luckily they only managed 2/3 songs before taking a long break, leaving Tarnya to catch a few more Z’s.

Looking at the map once we’d arrived at the port in Tallinn it wasn’t completely clear which way we should go, we could walk in any direction, but there wasn’t really a perfect route towards the hotel. The time estimate for walking jumped up from 30 minutes to 60 for some reason, I think it got confused about the route out the terminal. We instead decided to follow the crowd, popping into a nearby shopping centre and picking up a Monster and red bull for a boost of energy. The bus stop was only 10 minutes away from there so we decided to head to the hotel (Iglupark) and see if we could drop out suitcase off to make walking around the city easier.

The bus dropped us off on the main road near the small docks where the hotel is so we had another short walk, this time towards the water with lots of interesting construction and nautical things going on around us. The path turned to gravel which made the case a little tricky to drag, but we made it to the little reception hut where the lady kindly let us check in early. She didn’t need a card or ID to check in which is quite unusual for a direct booking!

The hut was so pretty …

After a short rest we hopped into a Bolt to Telliskivi (Creative City) hoping to find something tasty to try while completing a very serious competition between the two of us on who could capture the best photograph during the day. The Bolt was ridiculously cheap – one option was 2.8 EUR, but it didn’t get accepted so we tried with a 3.8 EUR option which summoned a driver almost immediately. Once we were in the driver asked us to double check the location because sometimes Bolt gets it wrong (I assume human error not Bolt!), and then we were off.

Arriving to Telliskivi we were surrounded by so much artwork and modified industrial installations. Every building was adorned with murals and it was impossible to not be impressed by everything in the area. We explored the different installations and tried to get ice cream, but most places were closed. There were a couple of restaurants open, but we didn’t really fancy a large meal, we were hoping for some small bites instead so decided to walk on into the city centre.

En route to the city we spotted an indoor and outdoor food market called Turg. I didn’t remember seeing this on my look at places to visit this afternoon, but it looked interesting from outside so we thought it was worth a peek before we headed into the main part of the city. It was well worth the visit, we managed to find ourselves a delicious toasted sandwich, caffeine, a brief toilet break, three ice creams (two for me, one for Tarnya) and some food inspiration for future meals.

After our stop at Turg we walked through the train station and towards the old city in Tallinn city centre. We spotted some beautiful yellowing leaves and a steep staircase up to what looked to be a good viewpoint, but at this point we quite frankly couldn’t really be bothered to climb all that way up. Hopefully this is somewhere we can visit tomorrow.

We spent the next couple of hours wandering around, making our way across the city seeing some of the biggest sights on our way. After we’d seen as much as we could with the quickly decreasing light levels, we found ourselves in a supermarket and procured prosecco for us to enjoy back at the Igluhut. Being at the far side of town, 40 minutes walk from the hotel, we decided to catch a Bolt back, finding ourselves walking a few minutes away from the supermarket because Bolt was banned in the general vicinity we had found ourselves in. There was a little warning that it’s a no waiting area so we expected we’d need to move quickly, then finding ourselves jumping into the car in a bus stop and it driving off before we’d ever sat down properly.

The evening was relaxing and fairly uneventful, I did have a brief excursion to an autonomous (not sure if that’s the correct word?) shop where you tapped your card to enter a shipping container shop with no workers to purchase an essential item in preparation for the next day. The prices were somewhat inflated, but it was well worth the novelty.

Day 5 – 12/11/2025

The Iglupark includes sauna access between 8:30 and 12:00 in saunas 3, 4 and 5. We found ourselves excited to try out the sauna and dip into Tallinn Bay, but weren’t entirely sure of the etiquette. Do we go dressed and undress at the sauna, do we go in our swimwear and a coat, or can we just go in the hotel robes? We went with option 3, hotel robes (plus trainers!). Sauna 3 had people in and sauna 4 had a dog sat in there so we walked on to sauna 5 and thankfully found the dog wasn’t actually in the sauna, the first 2/3rds of the building is dedicated as a waiting area with water and basic amenities available. The sauna itself was at the far end of the hut behind a separate glass door.

We managed 10 minutes in the sauna then moved swiftly to the sea. Before braving the water I sat in a rope chair overlooking it, Tarnya exclaimed that the air is cold enough for her and that the water won’t be needed. I stepped onto the first step down to the sea, ready to take the plunge, before noticing multiple warning signs that jumping in is forbidden. That really upped the stakes somewhat, jumping in makes sense, you just need an initial push to break the inertia and then you’re committed. It takes another level of resilience to slowly climb into the sea as your skin and joints scream at you to stop. Despite this, I did manage to get myself to upper thigh level and then pushed myself down to my neck. I think you should measure the time I was in the water in milliseconds, I wasn’t planning to stay in and flew back up the sauna to warm myself up after those ridiculous antics.

On our way back into the sauna we spotted the dog was out the room; I could have sworn that dog scorned at us for our feeble attempt at this authentic Estonian experience…

A brief shower and we were on our way out to explore Tallinn properly. Tarnya hadn’t joined my yesterday for the visit to the autonomous (I’m sure that’s the wrong way to describe it) shop so I insisted we catch a taxi from that side so we could get our morning caffeine there. No sooner had I opened my red bull, the Bolt driver accepted my request and had a 1-minute arrival time. I could see their car was pretty much on top of us on the GPS so I guzzled my drink as quickly as possible and disposed of the can just in time to jump in.

I spent the next 10 minutes fighting for my life, well, feeling nauseous, so same difference really.

We enjoyed a delicious chicken burger, Aperol spritz and Cuba libre in the Veru food hall before walking through the old city.

I hadn’t managed to find a google-maps-integrated sightseeing map online like I had for Helsinki so I just looked at the highlights google showed us instead. We walked right through the town and then stuck our heads into Rootsi-Mihkli Kirkik Church.

An old lady stopped us to tell us to wait 10 minutes because there is going to be some very very good music playing shortly. We waiting a little while, but it felt there was no end to the sermon being given in the church so we instead opted to walk on a little while, popping into a quirky vintage shop before ultimately visiting Kiek in de Kök museum. We started in the tower, learned lots about the Brotherhood of Black Heads and beat a firefighting pump game they had which was definitely not for children.

After climbing back down the tower, we walked along the city walls, spying the old executioners house and the courtyards the kitchens would be where the name comes from (Kiek – peek, in de – in the and Kök – kitchen (peek in the kitchen)). We looked in the Maiden Tower, Marstal Tower & Gate Tower and Tarnya put her Bachelors module on chair design to good use in an old cafe exhibition with samples of the chairs from the old cafes. We then returned to the Kiek in de Kök tower so that we could walk through the Bastion tunnels. The tunnels were a highlight of our visit to this museum; we were the only people down there, aside from the odd haunted house inspired mannequin which were just enough out of view to give us a jump scare.

Following our visit around the museum we visited all the key sites around the old town, Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, Tallinn Town Hall, Viru Gate, and climbed up to the viewing platforms. Tallinn is rich with interesting medieval sites so every corner we turned we spotted something else that was interesting. We paused to buy a drink in a mini supermarket – the staff member running the shop seemed to be in a terrible mood. A small family were struggling to check out on the self checkout and the worker shouted at them, told them he isn’t their cashier and that they need to press the button to pay. Interesting! Seemed friendly enough authorising our purchase so maybe the family had been rude to him first. I picked up a very beer-like ‘garage hard’ drink and went to sit in the gardens we’d looked down on during our walk over the city walls, I watched a short video to check that we’d seen the main sites and realised we’d missed out on St. Catherine’s Passage so we decided we’d go there while it was still light.

We bought a yin yang cookie and chocolate marshmallow slice from a small bakery, popped back across the square and visited some quirky shops opposite the florists. We then popped into Viru for a khachapuri. The khachapuri was made well, but the cheese itself was not completely authentic to the Georgian food we knew and loved in our travels to the caucasus. We planned to pick up snacks and drinks from the nearby supermarket before catching a Bolt, but the snack plan was veto’d by our fullness leaving us just picking up a few soft drinks instead. I had forgotten the treats in my bag we’d picked up earlier so this was no hardship really.

Day 6 – 13/11/2025

We started the day off with another round of sauna time. It was much busier today and a lady joined us in sauna 5, telling us to try 3 or 4 because they have wood burners and feel completely different. She poured two full scoops of water onto the heater and I’ll be honest, I think I was fighting for my life for a full minute. As soon as the second water scoop had finished being poured my ears burned with the heat of a thousand suns, every shallow breath inverse dragon fire and my eyes feeling like they were melting and evaporating at the same time. After that initial pain however, the true sauna experience began and we got to really enjoy the heat and humidity. I went for a brief dunk in the sea, warm shower, then returned into the sauna, this time trying the wood-fired sauna 3 where the dog was sat patiently in the waiting room and his owner inside the sauna told us he waits inside when it rains, but otherwise will sit patiently and obediently outside with no risk of running away or causing trouble.

We then returned to the room and killed time until the check out at 12.

I’d heard the maritime museum would make a great visit so we braved the rain and walked over to it. This museum was a fantastic recommendation, there were lots of interactive exhibits including an old submarine (Lembit) and a 100-year-old icebreaker ship (Suur Toll) which you could just wander round without any bother.

Some of the interactive exhibits included a water pressure simulation where you placed your hand inside and built the pressure to represent different depths, a boat game where you could steer a real mini boat around a course, a flight tester where you could make an aircraft from various things like paper cups and pipe cleaners and see if they fly or not over a giant fan, a lifeboat simulator which didn’t move with motors but was sort of floating on springs and then my personal favourite, a flight simulator.

After our visit, the rain was even worse so we popped into a Bolt to the Viru mall again, selecting a margherita pizza and a chicken borscht to share between us. The sourdough pizza crusts mixed with the borscht were a killer combo! It was absolutely pouring it down outside and we didn’t want to risk our valuables outside so we mooched around the mall and picked up a mini prosecco, rum and coke and energy drinks to enjoy back in the food hall. By the time we’d done all of this it was time to pick up our luggage and start making our way to the port.

The return ferry was the same ship as out outbound journey (Finlandia), but we opted for a different seating position because Tarnya had seen that the Finn’s make for a hilarious evening karaoke, so we thought we’d be doing ourselves a disservice by not watching that. The warm up was an English rocker who was very angry at the equipment, complaining that his home analogue setup is flawless, but this stupid ship iPad system was rubbish and unreliable. Eventually he did manage to get it working with some help and he did rock and roll for a good while. Partway through his set some of the crowd shouted that he needed to sing in Finnish, and perform Finnish songs to which he told them he wouldn’t because rock and the best music is English and that Finnish people are the only people who mock people trying to speak the language. After receiving yet more heckling, he spoke in 4/5 other languages and asked the hecklers what languages they speak to see if there is a common language he can perform for them in. They said only Finnish so he finished his set in English and told them that he is only messing with them.

We compared Uber and Bolt and found Uber was a couple of pounds cheaper to the hotel, but maybe for good reason. They kept us waiting for 15 minutes while they were just around the corner, then when they finally arrived they stopped in the middle of the roundabout and received some aggressive honking from the taxi driver they were blocking. An awkward shuffle into the car park where they pulled in instead and we were off.

Arriving at the hotel they were quick to inform us that the booking was for one person only and that we were too late for food, doh. Thankfully they only charged 40 EUR to add Tarnya on for two nights, but I felt a little jaded given we were missing the meal and that I blame their silly website. When the receptionist told us though I was expecting something like 80 euros so I wasn’t going to make a fuss over 40.

The hotel, Home Hotel Katajanokka is a former prison dating back to 1837 and operated as a prison until 2002. The room we were in was looking slightly tired and had a broken lock, but overall we were happy with the hotel. We’d made great accommodation choices on this trip.

As it was not getting late, we picked up some food from the nearby supermarket and enjoyed it in the room before catching some Z’s.

Day 7 – 14/11/2025

We were off to a really slow start today, rose for breakfast around 9, then returned to the room for a slumber until almost 12. We left the room to complete a little photo competition between ourselves, ticking off the last few bits we’d not seen in Helsinki yet.

The competition began in the hotel itself, the light cast so beautifully into the large windows at the end of the corridor, the contrast and of this natural light against the yellow artificial light stood out to me. We took some photos around the grounds, taking time to look around at the views the prisoners would have had from the exercise yard inside and beyond the prison exterior walls.

The neighbourhood of Katajanokka is a great location for a hotel; it’s a short walk to some of the main city sights and has some delightful architecture, striking a soft balance between industrial port buildings for the icebreakers and ferry, and fashionable art nouveau residential properties.

We both managed to capture some beautiful shots of the area and relished taking our time wandering back into the centre and spending more time taking in the sights knowing we had already spotted the majority of them in our first couple of days in the city.

I wanted to see Parliament House, Kamppi Chapel, Temppeliaukio Church and Hesperianpuisto.

The church and chapel were somewhat underwhelming, but we had fun exploring the city, clambering over the art museum roof and looking in some small shops. We still weren’t very hungry today so didn’t really stop for any food, but maybe that was a bit silly because we didn’t get to taste too many Finnish dishes. We did however have the included dinner at the hotel so maybe it was a good thing to save some money by waiting for that meal instead.

We purchased some prosecco to enjoy on our walk to the park, but the purchase wasn’t simple by any means. We entered an alcohol specialist shop, but it was nearly impossible to find the mini bottles of wine, that was until we were giving up and leaving and found them next to the tills. Whoops! Wine procured we headed back out and looked at Parliament House as the sun set, with a short stop at some very depressing single-person benches. After those antics, we found ourselves in the park with swans swimming towards us, ultimately to hiss at me and attract at least a dozen people to take photos and videos of them while we sat and watched.

Day 8 – 15/11/2025

We needed to check out by 12 which meant we could also take today easy too, perhaps not as easy as the previous day, but no real rush to start the day. I wanted us to visit Suomenlinna so we left our luggage in the hotel storage room and wandered towards the market where the ferry departs from.

I bought a couple of ABC day tickets for 24 EUR so that we could use them later for getting around the city and then getting to the airport.

In winter the ferry leaves on the hour and also 40 past every other hour which meant we didn’t have long to wait at all. We managed to get a seat by the window (didn’t fancy the cold outside!) which was a good choice because the heaters were under the seats so we were very comfortable.

We had a look in the visitors centre, then walked north east along a couple of bridges where we could see the modern military installations and a bit of a view of the city. We didn’t stay on this side for long though, there wasn’t much on that side of the island.

The route along the ‘blue’ walking route is a 1.5km marked path which took us through the main attractions and was much more interesting. The first thing we saw was the church – the church stands out on the island – but probably wouldn’t so much on the mainland. Apparently the church tower is also a lighthouse, but we didn’t see it illuminated with it being daytime so I’ll just have to take the guidebooks word for that.

There were some interesting dungeons and tunnels on the way towards The King’s Gate. We didn’t stop to look at them for too long as we were getting a little chilly and they didn’t look too dissimilar to fortresses we’d seen in the past.

We saw Ehrensvärd’s Tomb which was quite striking; I don’t recall seeing a tomb like it in the past. It’s a typical looking concrete rectangular tomb, but topped with a large patina’d bronze shield with a helmet and oversized medals.

We climbed up and around the walls around Bastion Zander and captured some photos then zipped through The Kings Gate and raced back to the port so we could head back into Helsinki city for some late lunch.

I was craving some junk food so we visited a burger joint – Bastard Burgers and shared a blueberry chicken cheese burger and topped chips. On our walk to the restaurant there was a pro Palestine march on a road we needed to cross. There were a lot of people in the march so we quickly jogged to get ahead of them and over the road so that we wouldn’t be stuck for ages.

After ordering, the food itself took bloody ages though; 40 minutes! We were getting to the point where we were worrying about the time we had left before the flight, but really we were planning to leave a little bit too early so it was probably not such as bad thing that it took longer than anticipated.

After filling up we caught the tram to the hotel to collect our luggage. Google maps was sending me left to catch the number 5 tram in 0 minutes, which felt like too little time to have a chance of catching it, but we spotted the number 4 on our right so hustled that way and managed to jump onto the number 5 we’d have missed in the other direction. A few minutes later and we were outside the hotel and ready to collect the bag.

The door to the luggage room was locked and I had to join a queue to ask reception to open it, it felt like it was taking an age to get to the front for a simple question but once I asked it took 2 seconds for the receptionist to remotely unlock the door. I had a quick look at the old prison isolation cell and then we headed out to the tram stop.

We waited at the stop for tram 4, we were there for 25 minutes, but 3 trams didn’t turn up. Others left before we also gave up and walked to the other stop – a joint stop for tram 4 and 5. We were only there 8 minutes before tram 5 appeared. We were getting a little worried about what time we’d arrive at the airport, but we needn’t have really, the trains to the airport are so frequent that there wasn’t really any chance that we’d have an issue.

We thought we’d be able to drop our suitcase off straight away and head straight to a lounge, but we found that the drop off only opens 2 hours prior to take off. How annoying! The airport also had no normal seats available, there were a couple of small banks of them on the top floor, but the lower floor only had horrible perch seats. Not quite the lounge experience we were expecting but we only need to wait 50 minutes or so before we could drop our bag off.

Travel through security was swift and access to the lounge was easy too. We opted for the lounge before the Schengen border which meant we’d have less time in the lounge but that we could go into it sooner. The lounge wasn’t the best, the food options were pretty poor and the drinks were only fountain drinks, but we were grateful for a comfortable space and some different food and drink options before the flight.

It was a long journey back for a European trip:
2 hours to the airport
3 hours in the airport
3 hours flight time
1 hour for luggage
0.75 hours for the return to the car park
3.5 hours drive home after having to charge twice

We had a real nightmare on the way back. We charged the car to 73% at the services at Luton Airport which should have been enough to get home however the battery dropped ridiculously quickly, so we found another services to top up with twice as much range as needed. When we were around 20 miles from home the car estimated 19 miles of range again which left us scrambling for a charger. I pulled into a services, but there were no chargers there, then into a nearby hotel which had signage stating you must be a hotel resident to use their chargers, finally we found a charger at Aldi which we could use. It looked like we would need to validate parking in the store itself, but by the time I realised that it was too late and we would have received a charge anyway. It took around 15 minutes to sort out the payment on their terrible website, but I was ecstatic once it started. I made sure it had plenty of charge so we wouldn’t need a third stop and then home we head.