Day 6 - Travel and Trawling
The day part of the day was a write-off to travelling from Budapest to Helsinki. As the Finnair plane I spotted as my Lufthansa plane pulled out of the gate can attest to, there is a direct option. I though had miles to use up, which meant i had to basically write off the day taking a 1-stop through Frankfurt, starting with a flight that left at 11:15, and ending with a flight landing in Helsinki at 17:30. I don't even want to bother looking up how much time I could have saved taking the direct flight.
Anyway, there is some utility in a quieter day to spread out in the trip, to reset a bit. Lighter on the wallet (you know aside from the flight...), the stomach, the legs, etc. I was still getting to Helsinki early enough for a dinner and night out, and some ability to get a first sense of what that city is about. Maybe it is combining this with the ferry tomorrow morning (10:20 - 12:20) to Talinn that almost makes this compound, but whatever - think of it as a day long journey from Budapest to Talinn, with a 15 hour stop in Helsinki in the middle for fun.
Pretty useless writing about Lufthansa on these inter-Europe flights. It's the same staid service of free water, followed by paid everything else, and then free chocolate. I slept for most of the first flight and about half the second one. Not that I was super tired, especially for the second flight I was hopeful, ready with a book, to be more productive. But somehow put me on these shorter flights and I'll fall asleep super quick every time.
Anyway, before I knew it we were landing in Helsinki, the land of the never setting sun (my name). The drive from Helsinki airport to my hotel, was around 30 minutes and allowed me to get a sense of the modernist architecture, greenery, and just pleasantness of the Helsinki and the Finnish countryisde.
Dinner gave more of the same, at Ravintola Muru (Ravintola being Finnish for "restuarant"), a mom and pop run 4-course prix fixe menu restaurant that just serves Finnish ingredients, Finnish cuisine. The first dish was a white asparagus (seems to be quite popular in this part of the world) with smoked whitefish mousse and roe, and the main a delicious reindeer fillet with parsnips and dill. Just a brilliant dish the fillet was. The restaurant as a whole was lovely, but of course the most fun part was it being basically daytime outside by the time the meal ended at 10:15.
Helsinki isn't the northernmost I've been - Anchorage beats it out by a scant one degree latitude. I went there a bit closer to teh summer equinox, so that is definitely the most "continuous sunlight" I've had - but this was close. It was very much not night at 10:15, and still fairly bright on the Western half view by midnight when I walked from one cocktail spot (Liberty or Death) to another (Gate A21). The cocktail spots themselves were different and quite nice. Liberty or Death was a classic darkly lit room with a long bar, mix of spins on classics and their own concoctions. Definitely a place I could see myself returning to.
Gate A21 is more a later night (open to 4:30am daily) but happens to serve good, whimsical cocktails and craft beer, with good music and not as much rambunctiossness as you would expect. It wasn't full at all but classy enough taht I already know where I'll be Sunday night come 1:30am when the rest of the city is shutting down. Gate A21, or the Karaoke Bar (same hours) I walked by on the way to a pizza/kebab shop, which closes at 3am, serves alcohol, and was buzzing. The last glimpses of light were going away as I ventured back to my hotel at 1:45 to call it a night on this brief respite in Helsinki before the trip continues proper tomorrow.
Day 7 - Taking My Talents to Talinn
As I write this, in the stunning, large, expanse of 24 taps that is the Pohjala Brewery & Taproom, and tell you I don't think a city has left a better first impression all the way around as Talinn. Let's backtrack though as the day started with me oversleeping (the classic "put the alarm off but deciding to sleep just five more min" routine) which led to a scrambled ambling over to the ferry to go to Talinn. Calling the Tallink Line's MyStar a "ferry" is probably not fair to it. It's more a mini cruise ship. There are three decks for passengers (2.5 I guess, as the 0.5 is the top deck which is partially closed). In that space, you have three private (for purchase) "club" spaces, a buffet restaurant, a grab and go restaurant (with good food options), a Burger King, three different bars, a starbucks and even cabins (though admittedly I have no idea who would book a cabin). Everything is pristine, and well maintained. It was the best, quickest, two hours of ferry I've ever had.
Exiting the ship on the Talinn side, I was almost immediately smacked in the face by two thoughts. First, "Holy Cow, I'm in effing Estonia!" and second, main this place is gorgeous and modern. Granted, Helsinki may prove to be very much the same when I explore it in more detail, but Helsinki is also a bit larger. The ferry port was deep into the port of Helsinki. Here, the ferry terminal dumps you out basically near two glass facade shopping complexes, and behind it a bit in the distance the assortment of spires that emanate from Talinn's old town. In love in two seconds.
The drive to my AirBNB only continued the joy, everything so bright, so clean, so stylish. I haven't been to either of probably the two main go-to Nordic / Baltic destinations, of Copenhagen and Stockholm, but after half a day in Helsinki, and one drive in Talinn, I am fully on board with this part of the world being the design capital for sure.
My first stop was a late lunch at the Pub Kompressor, which is a pancake bar, meaning the Dutch (and I guess Estonian?...) Pankoekken type of pancake, the slightly thicker than a crepe thing. That's all the really serve - a set of about 10 savory and 10 sweet, sadly too big to reasonably order one of each. I got a smoked ham and brie pancake, which was cooked perfectly with the brie the right level of gooeyness and the ham sliced into little strips to add to it. The restaurant was located in the Old Town, which I wasn't planning on visiting today (though some of my night spots are in it...), but the walk on the edge of it to there got me exicted on what is to come. A proper cobblestone, with bright alleyways and open squares. Again, just perfect to what you would want it to be.
My first tourism stop was a bit afield at the large Kadriorg Park, which houses multiple museums inside its lush grounds. The name, and frankly most of the first museum, is tied to its old Russian ties back when Talinn was a summer home for the Tsar. The park is lovely. But the real reason to come were the two museums. The first is housed in the building that was the summer home, so the building itself is a bit of a museum - but the Kadriorg Art Gallery doubles as a European fine art museum. They had one exhibit about Spanish art through 1800 - 1920 which was interesting, and the rest were room upon room of art, some from collections from the palace at the time, to others representing German and Russian art. The grandestr place though might have been the main hall in the second floor with sculptures and painted ceilings as well.
A five minute walk through the park is the KUMU - the main art museum for Estonia, showcasign 100% Estonian art, though this includes Soviet & Russian art from present day Estonia locations. On the walk over you pass, randomly but 100% seriously the President's palace. Now, Estonia is a Parliamentary Republic, so the President is basically a figurehead, but still it was cool and a bit shocking for that to just be there in the middle of the park, with fairly minimal security.
Anyway, for the KUMU, it was beautiful - one of the best collections of local art I can remember. Well designed, not overwhelming in size, but a beautifully moden building all the same. It's hard honestly to say what the best part was. To pick a few, the building is half moon shaped, and so in each corner is an open ceiling up three floors, one side has a wall of portraits of various Russian and German rulers (both controlled this land at various points before Estonian Independence), and the other a room of 100 busts. Next maybe was a series of modernist paintings done in a culture clash with their Soviet Socialist rule until they regained independence in 1991. On the whole, the KUMU was a fascinating experience.
The last of my day of museums was far nearer to the city, but the heavy traffic near the old town had my uber driver take me by the scenic route, back towards the port area, to the final stop of the Leesudam Museum. This was an interesting one that depending on your interests may not be worth it, but as a converted sea-plane hanger turned into a maritime & aviation museum, it was a blast for me.
The hanger is fully open, with a large suspended in air submarine in the middle, and a catwalk on an upper floor that takes you walking past a series of ships and bouys (way bigger than I thought). The ships were a combination of early "ice-ships" that in olden times people used in winter, and then sailing boats, many used by Estonian sailors to win Olympic medals. For the ice ships, tt was scary how primitive those were. From there the catwalk area ends with you being able to go into teh submarine. It was commissioned in the 1930s so it was fairly narrow, incredible claustrophobic, but cool all the same. The ground floor was a series of further maritime and aviation exhibits, the coolest of which is where they let you go sit in a life-size version of seaplane and fly in a flight simulator. I was terrible, though it was certainly fun. On the whole the Leesudam was well worth it.
From there, I went on a walk past a couple just developed portside housing and business complexes, both pristine in their modernity, to the brewery referenced above, where Pohjala pairs 24 of their beers on tap with, oddly, a Texan BBQ menu. I wasa bit hungry (in retrospect, I probably could've done both the savory and sweet crepe!) so I got a sausage which was great (the "Osaka BBQ Sauce" the best part), and a hazy IPA and Porter, my standard two-fer when juding a place's beer, and Pohjala hit it ouf the park. Talinn, and more broadly Estonia, is a place that I know cares about its beer - my parents realized this on their visit year more than a decade ago, when I'm sure to some degree their craft beer revolution was fairly nascent, so I wasn't surprised at how good the beer was, more about the set-up and modernity of the place.
Finally came dinner, at a place called NOA Chef's Hall. To be accurate, the whole complex is called NOA, situated about a 20 minute drive along the coast across the bay from downtown Talinn, prominent in the very much daylight at 8pm. There's a NOA a-la-carte restaurant, but NOA Chef's Hall is an 8/9 course meal behind a false door that brings you into something special. As always, will go through course by course at a later date, but know it was a special, special meal. I've very much underrated Estonia in general coming in, and nothing makes that more pronounced than places like this one.
Night in Talinn was lovely as well. It was a Wednesday, so still a relatively quiet night but I geuss here relatively quiet means the perfect crowd size, first at a top notch cocktail spot named Sigmund Freud Bar, and then at Koht. For Sigmund Freud, their conceit is their signature cocktail list is split across four different notable emotional states that Freud espoused. Not sure I buy it, but the drinks were fantastic - really smooth, quite strong and strange combinations that worked well. It was actually fairly light crowd when I got there at 11:00, but when leaving at 12:45, ahead of their stated closing time of 1am, the place was far more crowded and I hadn't heard any sense of a last call.
Koht is about a 8-min walk away through the middle of old town, which given there was still some sunlight peaking through was quite a sight. Very excited for my time tomorrow exploring it in more detail. Anyway, Koht was perfect - built into an old building, with narrow ceilings, it is just a bar with an old seemingly German or Russian women with an encyclopaedic knowledge of beer, serving up drinks. They have great craft draft and bottle options, plus all standard cocktails, and a crowd that was just loving life, a mix of 50/50 locals to foreigners - locals identifiable through each of them knowing the bartender and some of the other barflys well. Just a great place to end a great first half day in Talinn.
