Finland... Land of excitement, thrills, etc. Adam brought a guidebook (Europe on a shoestring) with a short guide on each country in Europe. It even has Andorra in it... The France section is about 30 pages long, Finland, a page and a half.

The 4th attraction listed for Finland is a Cable Factory (admittedly it is now used as an art space, but you get the picture). The one attraction they had which sounded pretty cool was a former fortress island, it was used to defend Sweden, Russia and then Finland after independence from Sweden and Russia. We took the ferry out there and walked all around the place and had a pretty cool time looking at old cannons, battlements and exploring a series of underground pitch black tunnels which led to more underground pitch black tunnels. I tired of these after a while, but Adam seemd to get continually excited about them.

Walked around the island for 2½ to 3 hours and then headed back up to the city to get something to eat. Went for a beer in the pub first (bottle of Stella €5 thank you very much...) The other thing that interested me about Finland was the wacky stuff they eat. I had already eaten Reindeer for lunch and when we got to the restaurant for dinner I chose the Elk and Venison casserole... Absolutely lovely... Adam had Buffalo for lunch and Reindeer for dinner...

All in all, Helsinki is a beautiful old city, with great architecture but there wasn't heaps to do if you don't love saunas... Kind of like that Seinfeld character Vegetable Lasagne (who was Finnish by the way)...

written by  Big_T on September 7, 2008 from Helsinki, Finland
from the travel blog: Big_T's Travel Blog
tagged Beer, Helsinki, Reindeer and Elk
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I got excited when I read the title Vegetable lasagna...too bad for the reindeer.
xoxxo your veggie friends

written by  Justine Ryan on September 8, 2008

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T, the You Tube link dont work

sort it out mate

written by  mark on September 10, 2008

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You're right about H-town, very beautiful city, really clean but god alike is it dull and wheredid they put all the people???

The one exciting thing for me was the prospect of going to Moomin village, but they've closed it down!! Bo ho..

written by  Chrysaliskiss on September 15, 2008

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