Saturday, 01-June-2024, through Thursday, 06-June-2024
Helsinki. Capital of Finland, and my final stop of both the Nordics and the Scandinavian countries before forging south toward the Baltic region.
When I first planned this trip, I freely admit that I came into it with certain preconceptions. Particularly salient to this post was my vision of Finland as another of the Scandinavian countries… technically a correct assumption, but after wandering Helsinki and learning a bit more about the country’s history… I’m not quite so certain.
See, I learned that while Finland currently belongs to the Nordics, its history is a bit more unique – The Finnish language, for example, has roots as a Uralic language similar to Estonian and Hungarian… and frankly sounds similar to Slavic languages to my untrained ears. Culturally, Finland has been its own country, part of Sweden, part of Russia, and even sort of part of Germany during World War 2.
Complicated.
Exploring the city, however, was quite a bit less complex than the history. It was lovely – I found Helsinki to be similar to Oslo and Portland in that there were quite a few small parts scattered about, in contrast to Reykjavik or Stockholm that seemed to have larger homogenous sections of either big parks or big concrete. There was some street art, mainly on electrical boxes, but not nearly as many murals and such as in Reykjavik… but it still felt like more than I saw around Oslo or Stockholm.
As with all European Cities so far, Helsinki was extremely walkable… seriously, I think I walked around 10 miles every day, just wandering around and visiting near spots!
For food – everything was delicious, to the surprise of absolutely no one. After eating at Aifur in Stockholm, I finally broke through my mental barricade against going to “tourist restaurants”, and so started exploring some more clearly touristy venues in Helsinki… Which, as it turned out, was a really great idea! I was able to find quite a few great spots, ate some more traditional Northern Finnish cuisine, and got some options that I definitely wouldn’t have if I’d stuck with being a “cool” tourist:
- Saaga – This was a tourist-focused place, but ohh man it was good! Focusing on Northern Finnish / Sami food, I fully recommend it for someone wanting to try out a traditional Finnish meal, like you’d get in a cabin up North in the deep winter.
- Lazy Fox – Turns out, most Finnish places don’t really do breakfast. From the Finns that I met, it seems that most Finns simply don’t do breakfast, or have it at home, so that makes sense. I, however, wanted a hearty breakfast… and Lazy Fox provided that exceptionally well!
- Lie Mi – A Thai spot I went to on a date! It was neat- I had a lot of Thai while I was living in North Portland, and this was… similar. Less spicy, but definitely good. Full recommendation.
- Bastion Bistro – A nice and fancy bistro on Suomenlinna Island, with an excellent chicken cesear salad. The downside is that the outdoor seating is overgrown with stinging nettles, which I learned about the hard way. My leg stung for the rest of the day, which kind of outweighed the good food.
- Woolshed Helsinki – an “Australian Gastropub” that I went to, because they were the only spot in town that served Chicken Parmesan. Like… what? None of the Italian restaurants had it… and what Woolshed had was an abomination – but an absolutely delicious abomination. Served over crispy French fries, with ham thrown into the Chicken Parm because why not, it was delicious and abominable.
- La Lasagne – A full-day Lasagna restaurant that I went to for breakfast… and had breakfast lasagna (made with eggs and bacon instead of beef and ricotta). It was amazing.
- Lappi Ravintola – Another amazing touristy-restaurant that I went to on a date, this was my favorite restaurant in Finland… and possibly my favorite on the whole trip so far, in terms of decor and “fun”. Aifur, ROK, and Cafe Unicorn were great (Stockholm, Reykjavik, and Nuuk, respectively), but Lappi Ravintola basically took a New Hampshire ski lodge and stuffed it into a building in the middle of Helsinki. Good food, great decor.
