It is very very popular, and extremely easy for people to visit Helsinki, and spend the weekend in Finland, when you live in Tallinn. Vice Versa, Finnish people have always fancied comming to Tallinn where alcohol is cheaper. But the links between the two countries go further than just this commercial relationship. The’ve shared close links during History and both have a very similar language. We therefore HAD to check out how close it was to the other side of the Baltic and see the finnish other than singing loudly in the streets.

What a great country ! Many have told us how cold and strict Helsinki can seem to the traveler, but on the contrary, we were enchanted by our stay and regreted it was so short to see everything ! The blue sky and sunshine helped for that I’m sure, but the finnish people we talked to (and believe me we spoke to all those we could catch!) were extremely helpful, getting out of their way to show us where things were, how the machine worked our even to find things we’d forgotten in the bus. Many would have just pointed in a direction and nodded at us, with a “good luck” in their eyes. Not here.

Appart from the people, the city itself is nice, not amasingly decorated, but charming, the imposing architecture constrasted by soft pastel colors. We visited most of the churches there were to see, tasted the reindeer sandwiches of course, the smoked salmon, when I think about it, we ate most of the time !

We did manage to get out of Helsinki to discover a smaller city on the coast called Porvoo. Its old town on the top of a small hill overlooks a peacefull river in which the red houses reflect in. Outside of town, lies a great expanse of wetlands, where birds like to nest. With the winter light and the first frosts, this scenery was quite something. It was worth the walk !
There too people were just adorable, a lady in a restaurant (I told you we ate all the time!) asked all her staff and found a brochure (in french!) to try and answer the simple question “by the way, what is this museum about ?”

As I said, it was too short to see finland in just two days, but it’ll be a good excuse to go back one day !