Day 1 Stockholm - a fairly quiet day

27 October
Day 1 Stockholm

Woke up this morning pretty early and went out to watch the scenery go past in the early morning light.  We'd made it to the archipelago before Stockholm so we were going through a bunch of small islands ... most with some form of human habitation.

It wasn't particularly cold but there was a very fresh breeze which made it a bit uncomfortable being on deck after a while.

Arrived in Stockholm and I disembarked with the hundreds of other people on the boat then slowly made my way to the hostel.

My Finnish SIM card worked for a while but eventually it stopped so I stopped in at a 711 convenience store to pick up a Swedish one.  Expensive!

It took me a couple of hours to get to the hostel since I was taking the ingress route but when I arrived at the harbour I saw my accommodation across the river.

That's right ... I'm staying on a boat!  I've been very nautically themed lately!  I saw this on hotels.com and thought it looked pretty cool and I had to stay there.  The boat doesn't seem to move at all so it's basically just a funny looking building but it's cool!

It would have been great if the boat had a galley to be able to cook in but it doesn't, so I've got to go up to the main building for the cooking facilities.

They let me check in early which was super so I dumped my bag and did a bit of planning for the next couple of days.

Eventually I took off and went for a wander around the island my boat is on but there wasn't much interesting there.  There IS a modern art museum but I'm not sure I'm going to check it out given how shit I think contemporary art is :)

I wander into the city and make my way to the central square in Stockholm where I am doing another free walking tour of the Stockholm Old Town since I enjoyed the Tallinn and Helsinki ones.  This one was hosted by an American chick who is now living in Sweden because her mother is Swedish.

Unfortunately this tour was nowhere near as enjoyable as the Tallinn and Helsinki tours.  The tour guide was kind of annoying and while I'm sure she thought she was being amusing I would have to disagree.  It's hard to put my finger on exactly why she was annoying but she just was.  And the tour itself just wasn't as informative as the other ones.  The first couple of tours went into the history of the cities and the countries and had relevant and amusing anecdotes.  Again - it's hard to put my finger on exactly what I didn't like about it but maybe it's that the girl was trying too hard to be funny and she should have been focusing on being interesting.

At the end I snuck away without giving her a tip because I didn't like the tour and I didn't have any small money anyway.

After that I wandered around the old town for a bit longer.  It's certainly not in the same sort of touristy pristine condition as the Tallinn old town but that's because this one looks like it actually has people living and working there.  It feels more lived in and authentic and less like a tourist attraction.

I bought a 48 hour Stockholm Pass which will hopefully save me some money but it was pretty god damn expensive.  The girl at the counter accidentally gave me 2 cards so I'm going to try to take advantage of that.  I'm not sure how I can do that but I'll give it a crack.  Worse case I'll give it away and build some karma points.

Stopped in at a market on the way back to the hostel to get some food for dinner and breakfast.  Showered (great showers in the boat! Plenty of water pressure and hot water), cooked dinner and now I'm writing this blog.

Stockholm is a beautiful city.  Walking back through the city to the hostel was lovely and it's definitely not as cold here as it was in Helsinki.

Apparently the hill on the street is shifting so the buildings on either side of the alley are tipping towards each other.  There are some lamps that will be crushed in a couple of years.

Day 3 Helsinki - some small bits and pieces and a ferry to Stockholm

26 October
Day 3 Helsinki

It's snowing!  It snows allllll day today and it's beautiful!  And kind of annoying at times.

My lightning visit to Helsinki is finished today.  I get an overnight ferry to Stockholm tonight but still have a full day today.

My first stop after breakfast is the Temppeliaukio Church.  It's a modern church that is carved out of a cliff and it's absolutely gorgeous.  The beautiful stone walls, a fantastic wooden slatted dome on the ceiling and a really nice looking organ.  What a great church!  So completely different to the standard cathedral style of stuff I've been seeing for the last month or so.  I was quite enjoying the peace and solitude in the church when a Chinese tour group then a couple of families turned up and ruined the serenity.

After that I went to the Finnish History Museum.  It was another museum housed in a great building but overall I thought the museum was pretty boring.  It was small and other than a few pieces I didn't really get much out of it.  That said - there was an interesting exhibit on the ground floor with a bunch of photographs celebrating 100 years of Finnish independence.

Off to the National Library after that which is a fantastic library building.  I couldn't read any of the books but it's a great museum to walk around (quietly of course).

Then a quick look at the orthodox cathedral across the road which was a lovely pure white domed church.  The star of the church was the organ at the back though.  Fantastic.

Wandered around a bit more in the snow, stopped for a cold drink then grabbed my bag from the hostel and went to the ferry terminal.

So it's not really a ferry I'm on but a small cruise ship.  There are bars and nightclubs and poker machines everywhere.

I've got a private cabin which is nice.

I splurged and paid for the buffet dinner on the ship hoping there would be some great Nordic cuisine.  And there was.  You could almost call the buffet an art installation called The Many Faces of a Herring.  Heaps of food and it was all tasty.  And I completely over-ate.  But so did everyone else.  I swear there were people who went back for 10 plates of food.

Since it gets dark so early here at this time of year there's not much to see outside so I'm just hiding in my cabin, catching up on my blog and regretting how much I ate.

Day 2 Helsinki - walking tour, suomenlinna and beers

25 October
Day 2 Helsinki

Because I enjoyed the Tallinn walking tour I decided to do a free walking tour of Helsinki today as well.  This was good because it started at 10am so it was the first thing I did today and still had plenty of time to do stuff in the afternoon.

I also made a point of not walking around the central city area last night knowing that I was going to do this tour.  Which was good because we didn't cover any ground I had already walked.

This was another good tour.  The guy wasn't quite the performer the Tallinn girl was but he was passionate and had plenty of info and some good stories And practical tips about places to eat or drink or visit.  Helsinki, like Tallinn, has a lot of quite recent history.  Like the civil war between the Communists and Not-Communists (which the Not-Communists obviously won in Finland).  The city has made the choice to preserve things like damaged walls or monuments to embrace that history rather than repairing them.  I like that approach.

Also - did you know that the Molotov Cocktail was invented in Finland?  The Finns had no real way to fight Russian tanks but they noticed an air intake at the back of the tanks used to cool the engines.  Someone figured out that if you threw a flaming bottle of booze into the intake it would throw the flaming liquid all over the interior of the tank.  They basically turned the country's vodka bottling factories into Molotov cocktail factories to fight the Russians.  Fascinating.

A couple of people from the hostel were doing the tour as well so we sort of hung around together during the tour.  And afterwards I went and visited Suomenlinna Island with Lee (German girl) from the hostel.

The island is an old fortress that is now a unesco site.  Lots of walls and tunnels and cannon emplacements.  Fun and interesting place to walk around and it was nice to share that with someone rather than walking around alone for a change.

Spent a couple of hours there then headed back to the city where Lee went back to the hostel to pack her bag while I went off to the Helsinki Design Museum.

The design museum was quite small but I enjoyed the hour or so I spent there.  The top floor was closed as they were renovating for a new exhibit so I got a discounted ticket.

They basically had two exhibits.

One was a bunch of items that were designed by Finns.  A whole range of stuff.  From high tech gadgetry for use in tree lopping trucks, to plates, chairs, computer games, Nokia mobile phones and fashion.

Downstairs was a temporary exhibit about a pair of Finnish scissors.  Fiskar's is a famous brand of scissors in Finland apparently and they had a bunch of artists or designers do an artwork or something that is inspired by the scissors.  There was a variety of artworks and it was a really fun and enjoyable exhibit.

Not the best museum in the world but a nice laid-back way to spend an hour.

After that I headed off to a craft beer bar that we walked past on the tour.  Scott (Canadian) and Lee from the hostel and tour joined me.  And later on a couple of other girls Scott met on the tour joined us as well.  Another German and an Australian who were staying in a different hostel.  It was a fun night and though it cost me a small fortune I really enjoyed working through their beer list.

What use is money if you're not going to spend it right?