Baltic (5-end): Helsinki

We arrived in Helsinki around 17:30, it was a bit rough sea trip but I managed to sleep for a while during the trip. We directly went to the Tourist Information (still with our luggage) and got several useful information (such as how to reach our hostel :-P). After checked in and dropped our luggage, we walked to the city center. Helsinki is lovely city though I have heard from some friends that it's not really a city worth to visit. I like Helsinki more than Oslo or Copenhagen, but I am not sure to compare it with Stockholm, still love Stockholm so much.
I like the atmosphere in Helsinki, the pedestrian area, the Senaintorri square where I sat to see the clouds moved, and the Esplanade garden, oh the train station was also nice. I only don't like the price there :-P That late afternoon we visited the elegant Tuomikirkko and Uspenski orthodox church. We finished the day with a late dinner in a local fast food restaurant called Chilli (welcome to Helsinki...no more fancy restaurants :-P).

The next day was the last day of our trip, time is indeed passed by so fast when you are in holiday :-( We checked out and put our luggage in a locker in train station. Our first destination was the old market hall. It was not so big but very nice market hall (very clean) and they also sell some interesting things, such as mint marmalade :-P We had breakfast there and then we went to the nearby market square to do...souvenir hunting hehe. We then took a ferry to Suomenlinna, the famous fortress island 15-min by ferry from Helsinki. It is a Unesco World Heritage site and has an original name, Viapori from the Finnish, before was named Sveaborg (fortress of Swedish), and finally re-named as Suomenlinna (fortress of Finnish). It was raining when we arrived there, but thankfully it stopped when the guided tour was about to start. The guide was so funny and expressive which made the guided tour more attractive on that cloudy day. The fortress has a very interesting history. It actually consists of six small islands which were connected and was designed as a fortress with some underground tunnels.

We left Suomenlinna around 14 and decided to explore Helsinki more. We had our lunch at Wrong noodle house (strange name, isn't it) and then took tram to Temppeliaukio kirkko (gosh, difficult name!). It is quite a special church in Helsinki since the interior was excavated and built into the rock. The natural light comes through from the glazed dome and it is used frequently as a concert venue due to its excellent acoustics. Our last program that day was watching a free folks musical performance in Esplanade square, which was really interesting, before going to the train station to get the airport bus. Our flight was at 21.25 and we arrived safely around 22:30 in Duesseldorf. Ja, wieder zu Hause... :-)