I'll say this right off the bat - I prefer Tallinn to Helsinki. I probably prefer Budapest to Helsinki as well. This may change over the next 48 hours, and I should note this is not to say Helsinki is not lovely. It is. Everything I've done or gone to so far in Helsinki has been very good. I want to start off by saying that because I think it is important to make it clear that I don't just blindly love everything I do in these trips and think each place is better than the last. It sometimes comes across that I glow about everything, love everything. Generally I think there is truth to this in as much as I do a lot of research and prep into the places I go and what I do when I'm there. Also I think my expectations were a bit lessened for Budapest and Tallinn. Not as much for Helsinki.
Helsinki provide a wild-card in my planning in that the town seemingly shuts down completely on Mondays. Most restaurants are closed, nearly all the sites are. Some are closed on Sunday too so had to be selective on what I did today vs. what I left for tomorrow. Mentally kept Monday as a day to explore Espoo (a town about 30 min outside Helsinki) and a National Forest near it. But anyway, back to today in Helsinki.
I did a lot of walking, and saw a lot of things, but started it with a trip down to the main area of the city. It is a fairly small city for having 1m+ people, where you go from the more exurb that my AirBNB is and within five minutes you're basically at the edge of the city. A more enterprising person would've jsut done the 45 minute walk that I took a 10 min uber for. It dropped me off the the Esplinade, a thin but long park in the city that cuts it in half somewhat (north/south) and leads up to the waterfront. The waterfront itself has a nice collection of buildings, port stuff, a ferris wheel, and the looming, beautiful Umpenski cathedral (my first tourism stop) in the back. It is no V&A Waterfront, but it is far prettier than I gave it initial credit for on my quick walk on Tuesday.
The Umpenski is a good place to start, a nicely ornate Orthodox church up a moderate hill, provide a great view of the waterfront, the rows of buildings behind it, and Helsinki at large. the cathedral itself is stunning, though sadly I couldn't take photos insider for the simple and fair reason that there was a baptism going on in the building. They did let us in one door to at least marvel at the mosaic work on the columns and ceilings, but it would have to be something that remains in the eye.
From there, I walked about 10 minutes over to the Senate Square, a large square with the Helsinki Cathedral up a flight of 20 or stairs imposing over the square on one side. Both Cathedrals are Finish Orthodox churches, though I do like the contrast of the Umpenski being brown and this one white, great opposites in their position among the main sites of Finnish Orthodoxy. Also here in cooperation not contrast, the Helsinki Cathedral was holding a wedding, and so was closed to the public for a 2hour stretch that of course overlapped with my time there. No issue though, because it gave me more time to take in the wild stuff going on in the square.
In a perfect show of the expansive influence of American culture, Helsinki was having a "Yankee Car Show" in the main square, with it being filled with about eight rows of 20 or so each of classic old cars, and I mean some true bangers - old Corvette's, old Mustangs, old Pontiacs, all different colors. It was beautiful. There was also a band playing country music on the side, with a giant American flag behind them - I assume them to be from America. It was quite a scene, though sadly no hot dog stands or something like that.
No worries though, because lunch was next at the Old Market Hall in the waterfront, a fairly normal looking brown hall building from the outside, with a series of 12 or so restaurants, eateries and grociery shops on the inside. It was a panoply of Finnish products, with me scooping up to eat a smoked salmon, roe and dill on bread, a classic finnish salmon soup (so good) and a minced bear (yes, bear) on bread with juniper berries. Also got a couple things to go, but 50/50 on if I can actually take them into my country, so let's see on those.
Post lunch, with ominous skies overhead (a potential afternoon T-Storm looming, but whether it comes or not, something that should clear out by night), I took mostly to the indoors, first to two art museums, each of which near another impressive open square. Helsinki does not have the ornateness or neo-gothic ness of the architecture of a Budapest, nor anything like old town in Tallinn it's modernist design sensibilities probably disallowing it from those things, but it does have a whole lot of large open squares. The one outside the first museum I went to sits Helsinki's main train station and square aroudn that.
The museum was the Ateneum, which while there is a National Art Museum, the Ateneum is basically Helsinki's main art museum. It was perfectly sized, with some nice exhibits - primarily the entire top floor given up the the works and life of Eero Jarnefelt, their proclaimed greatest Finnish artist. His work was quite good, finding a lot of decent similarities to the works of some of the Canadian artists I've really grown to enjoy over my various trips to Art museums in the Toronto area. The other floors had more varied art, but all more traditional with littel modernist. One exhibit was interesting where it showed a few instances of Finnish disciples or students of famous international painters and their take at painting in those styles - incouding one instance of someone trying to recreate the look of Paul Cezanne.
The second museum, near a large open air park and event space, was the Kiasma, a modern art museum which definitely leaned heavily into what it means to have modern art. Some of the exhibits took it to the extreme, as in the top level which was given to showcase the art of a local finnish girl, who mixed some actually interesting concepts with also having one part having two actors just sit on the groudn glumly whimpering. Other floors were probably higher in hit rate - including a really whimsical one by a Japanese/Finnish artist who for instance turned his bout with Syphillis into the inspiration for a fake theme part full of posters and artwork about the "Journey with Syphillis". The Kiasma was whimsical and fun, didn't take a whole lot of time, and brought me to an interesting part very much still in the city walls.
The last tourism stop of the day was the Temppeliaukio Church, which is a lutheran church built into a rocky hill. You would think this is on a cliff or far away, but it is literally in another one of the cities many squares, just I presume it was a square built around this church. The inside is the hollowed out portion of this rocky hill, with organ, altar and all built into the rocks - it is quite airy and hard to believe that right around you outside is a fully city square.
From there, I meandered my way 20 minutes down back towards the main part of the city, past the large Kammpi Shopping Mall - where I did stop to grab a cappucino, to SalamaNation, an odd sounding name for the taproom of Salama Brewing, which was fantastic. All three stops on this trip have been places with strong beer cultures, and Salama was no different - a place where I decided to grab a few to take home as well.
The final fancy dinner of the tour (man do I have a lot of dinners to still chronicle) was at Finnjavel, which was briefly featured in teh Somebody Feed Phil episode on Helsinki (of where to some degree the inspiration to come to Finland was born). Finnjavel, like NOA in Tallinn, has both a a-la-carte area and a tasting menu area, here the tasting menu being in a dimly lit side room. Of course, this being Finland, the dim lighting isn't too impactful when it is sunny until 10pm. The meal was incredible, a bit more traditional and delicate than Gron the day before. My quick ranking of the tasting menu's would probably be: Noa, Salt, Finnjavel, Laurel, Gron but ask me in a week and I'll probably have a different view.
Post dinner, I tried to go to Trilby & Chadwick, a speakeasy near the Helsinki Cathedral, but the line was too long that I left and went back to old mainstay (e.g. I went there on Tuesday) Liberty & Death. Anyways, Trilby & Chadwick is open on Monday and I can't imagine they'll be too crowded then. Liberty & Daath was quite full, where they sat me at what they turned into a makeshift communal table (the real lsit is probably 6 people), which was nice because it gave ready-made interaction opportunities.
From there, headed back over the the area with Post and Kaiku - Post being not as full as the day before, and Kaiku more full, but weirder in that they were playing what I can only describe as african beats and music. It was great, it got people moving (me included), but was also a bit funny given the racial make-up of the crowd. No need to worry though, on the whole both were harmlessly pleasant. I was always picturing a more boisterous and/or aggressive EDM scene here, but from what I gathered speaking to a couple folks there, places like this are far more popular in the non-Summer months, where it gets dark early and is too cold to do much other than head inside as dance the cold away. I came during a relative hot streak, so unsurprisingly many locals are finding alternative things to do. But for me, it was just about perfect.
