Similarly to the Guinness tour, I’ve already done the book of Kells tour. It was on my list the first time I visited Dublin – back in 2023, checking the city out to see if it’d be a good spot to rest my head for a year of MBA adventure.
Well, it’s been a bit over a year, and Trinity’s redone the Book of Kells experience. Brian’s visiting, I can get in for free now since I’m a student…
So we went.
Brian and I explored, read about the book and how it was made, checked out the book. Basically all the things about the Book of Kells that I remembered from the last time. We walked through to check out the old Library, and… Whoa.
That’s when we set into the new bits – a huge globe art installation in the Old Library. An amazing immersive video about how the Book of Kells made its way to Ireland. A whole interactive scene about the building of the library… Definitely worth the second visit.
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.
While wandering around Gamla Stan, the old-city part of Stockholm, one comes across quite a few tourist destinations. Souvenir shops, tours, events, everything is calling your name (primarily your wallet). I avoided most of them, as a general rule – stopping into some shops to buy interesting postcards, or into a particularly appealing looking cafe when hunger starts gnawing at me.
I have an interesting relationship with Tourist Restaurants. On the one hand, I don’t like “tourist” things… in general, I prefer seeing a bit more of the truly native experience of a city. That being said, I also want to experience the traditional culture of a city. And, as I learned in Greenland, most “native” restaurants don’t really serve traditional food, since people would normally just cook that for themselves at home.
Connected to that… I am, at the end of the day, a tourist. I am touring. Sometimes the best way to see the traditional culture of a place is, simply, to be a tourist.
Aifur is an example of me diving into my role as a tourist head-first, full power.
It’s a tourist destination, no two ways about it. In the center of Gamla Stan, with big signs hawking a “Viking Experience”, and a wait-list at least a day long, it’s absolutely targeted toward people who don’t live in Stockholm.
And you know what? That’s great, and I had a blast!
I was announced as a I walked in, and sat at a table with two whole people who spoke English, out of maybe 8 or 10 total. We communicated out best, shared a bottle of mead, and took silly pictures with a Viking helmet, sword, and axe. I ate Pike, which I don’t think I’ve ever had, and devoured a glorious berry tart. I learned the correct way to pronounce “Wieliczka”, a place I’ll be visiting in Poland, and failed miserably at pronouncing many other Polish words.
It was ridiculous, silly, delicious, and fun. In my mind, a good tourist experience!
