HELSINKI (FINLAND)

Having completed a very enjoyable and slightly longer than expected stay in Norrtalje, I returned briefly to Stockholm to catch up with some friends and to check out a few other places I had missed during my first visit to the city, more specifically the royal residence at Drottingholm. During my time in Stockholm the weather was fantastic and as such I had no qualms about walking the 20km round trip from the city to Drottingholm and back. Stockholm's natural beauty made the walk very enjoyable and as I discovered during my previous visit there were plent of interesting photo opportunities to be had whilst walking around in the city.

Having been 'hooked up' with some cheap tickets on the ferry to Finland (an aquaintance of mine worked for the company) I decided to make a brief visit to Helsinki and so after 1 night in Stockholm I took the trip accross the Baltic Sea to Finland. Helsinki was certainly an interesting city, however it was in no way as beautiful as Stockholm and very minimalistic in its appearance. There was however some impressive architecture amongst the various buildings of significant within the city, in particularly the array of Lutheran and Russian Orthodox churches, which differed very noticeably in their interior apperances. However, whilst the city was nice and contained a number of different attractions, the most interesting of which I found to be the Sibellius monument, it only managed to maintain my attention for about 1 day.

On the second day I visited a small island fortress set up by the Swedes when Finland was under their control and which was used for defending Finland from the Russians. This was extremely boring, despite being (apparently) the largest maritime fortress in Europe (whatever that means).

My stay in Helsinki was probably for just the right amount of time and given how short that was I made no attempts to try and master the Finnish language, which was probably a wise decision. I don't think I have ever encountered a more odd language and was continually amazed at how one could possibly pronounce a word with 3 consonants followed by 3 vowels and then a further 3 consonants ? Luckily the street names were also given in Swedish, which made pronunciations a little easier when I was asking for directions.

After my brief visit I returned on the ferry to Sweden, along the way managing to purchase a few nice items in the duty-free shop. I arrived early in the morning and after a brief catch up with some friends in Stockholm I took a train south towards Oskarshamn so as to catch another ferry to the island of Gotland the following day.

Photos 1&2: Drottingholm Slot (Residence of the Royal Family)
Photos 3-5: Various shots of the harbour in Stockholm.
Photos 6-10: Trip to Finland (views of the harbour and archipeligo near Stocholm)
Photos 11-16: Various sites around Helsinki (Cathedral, Sibellius monument, harbour...)
Photo 17: Catching up with friends in Stockholm.