More Finland, and a bit of Estonia!

My adventures in wintery Finland continued with - surprise, surprise, a cruise to Tallinn. Tallinn is the favorite destination for Finnish booze-cruisers, but it's actually also one of the most picturesque and well-preserved medieval cities in Europe. So off we went, me, dad, Janne and Katja, on the brand-new (the rather boldly named Megastar, if memory serves me).

The journey through the snow-covered Helsinki archipelago was quite a nice one, and we arrived in Tallinn just in time for lunch! After some quick research on tripadvisor, we decided to book a table at a place called Mekk. And boy, was it good... Tallinn is one of the best places in Europe to eat very sophisticated and tasty food for extremely reasonable prices. The food here was about as good as at Chef et Sommelier the day before yesterday, yet the prices were considerably easier on the wallet. OK, I know labour costs aren't the same, but for people coming from Helsinki, it's great!

The food bit done, we had our mandatory stroll around the beautiful historic centre. We checked out the main square, with the picturesque town hall, and visited the free pharmacy museum - quite an interesting little curiosity (and still an open pharmacy as well, actually!). We then made our way up to Toompea, or castle hill, and briefly checked out the nice views across the old town. We also paid a brief visit to the beautiful Orthodox cathedral - this one is even nicer than Uspenski cathedral in Helsinki, I would say.

The next stop was the (bear with me, a bit of a mouthful, this) Lennusadam seaplane harbour. It basically houses a huge seaplane hangar, which has been converted into a naval museum, which charts the small yet energetic nations naval history. The place is worth visiting just for the inventive building, and how it's used to showcase the boats (including a submarine!). The highlight here is no doubt the submarine, which can be visited on the inside, but there are also other interesting ships outside in the harbour that can be visited. A very interested place to visit, if miliary/seafaring history interests even a little.

And then, 'twas time to head back to Helsinki. We were nearly sober on arrival - are we getting old or what ? Nobody should get back sober from a Tallinn cruise...

On Thursday, I had a crazy plan to go and meet some ex-Nokia colleagues in Tampere. I actually managed to convince my young cousin Jukkis to drive me to Tampere with Jarkko's rather cool 5-series Beemer. We started our visit by checking out an ex-colleague's, Pentti's, startup called Nomicam. Quite an interesting setup they have, great to catch up with some ex-colleagues as well.

The plan was then to meet up with some more folks for dinner, but before that we had a bit of time to kill, so after a rather tasty burger meal at Friends n' Burgers (I say that without irony, their burgers are great!), we headed off to check out the Finnlayson factory complex, kind of for no particular reason, other than the fact that it's quite an interesting place to stroll around. We visited the Werstas industry museum, which was actually very interesting - and fantastic value for money as it's free! Tampere is sometimes called the Manchester of Finland thanks to its industrial heritage, and this museum pays great homage to this aspect of the city's past. I warmly recommend visiting should you happen to find yourself in Tampere.

The meal was great - we had loads of beer and ridiculously spicy chicken wings (I asked for suicide level sauce - you get what you ask for), and had quite a good turnout (Sami, Hannu & Rita, who used to live in Nice, Pentti and also Olli, my ex-colleague from Ulm). Great to catch up with everybody! We made it back in one piece, rather late at night, thanks to some sterling driving from young Jukkis.

Now, no wintery visit to Finland is complete without an "avantouinti" (Finnish for "winter swimming"). This time around, I wanted to try it out at a place called Löyly, a sort of fancy sauna in Helsinki, located in Hernesaari. It's a little bit pricey, but quite a wonderful place to visit. The architecture is great, and so are the saunas. There is even a "savusauna" (a smoke sauna). And of course, I got to do the winter swimming, even if the hole of the ice was rather tiny (not that winter swimming in my case really implies any actual swimming - it's more a case of "get in there, try to survive for about a minute, and get out").

After a booze filled night out with Aki and Jani, it was sadly time for me to head back to France on Saturday. All in all, yet another wonderful visit to my home country.  Hopefully it won't be too long until I can make my way back!

Back home via Tallinn and Stockholm

Time to head to Tallinn, then, one of the favourite travel destinations of my dear countrymen. There are plenty of reasons to visit Tallinn - one could imagine the main one being the fact that it's a very nice city with a superbly well-preserved medieval old town, reasonable prices, friendly people and an interesting history. But alas, the reason most (or at least many) of my fellow Finns go is cheap booze. Not that I want to patronize anybody - I have been on a couple of those booze cruises as well in my "wild youth"...

Anyway, for us this trip was a bit of a family reunion - happily my parents and both of my brothers (with better halves) could all make it. The ship left Helsinki harbour in the evening, and arrived the next morning (well, actually, it arrived in the night, but the disembarkation took place in the morning). We spent our time on the boat more or less like everybody else - had a big buffet meal (an absolute must), shopping, and naturally beer and karaoke in the bar (well, we decided to just observe the karaoke...).

We arrived bright and early in the morning then, and headed off to explore Tallinn. Well, actually, we started off with a buffer breakfast at a hotel in the port of Tallinn. Our stomachs filled, we started our exploration of Tallinn with the KGB museum at Hotel Viru. Hotel Viru was constructed (by Finns, actually) during the communist years - it was the only place foreigners were allowed to stay. Naturally, all the rooms were bugged - the surveillance took place on the "secret 23rd floor", where the KGB museum is rather appropriately located. There isn't much to the museum actually, but it's definitely a quirky sight not to be missed. We had a very entertaining guide who really brought the past alive, so to speak with her lively anecdotes from the "good old days". There were also some stunning sights over old Tallinn from the hotel rooftop.

The rest of my family seemed more keen on shopping than sightseeing, so we decided to go our separate ways and meet up for lunch in the old town later on, so off I went on my own to explore old Tallinn. And what a fascinating place it is - it's an even prettier place than I can remember. Tallinn is certainly a place with a rich history - there are traces of inhabitants dating back 5000 years. What remains today dates back to the 13th century, when Tallinn was part of the Hanseatic league. The old town is remarkably well preserved and very spread out. It has become pretty touristy since I came here last time, no doubt thanks to Easyjet and RyanAir, but it's still a very charming place to walk around.

After taking in the cobble-stoned streets around the town hall square, I made my way up to Toompea Hill. Toompea Hill is, as the name suggests, a hill overlooking the old town. It's where the castle of Tallinn is located, it is also where the seat of the Estonian government can be found. It's a pretty nice area to walk around as well, with a couple of interesting churches to visit. The most impressive one was the Alexander Nevski Cathedral, similar to the Uspenski cathedral in Helsinki. These days it's the main church of the Estonian orthodox church. The views up from Toompea over the old town are another good reason to hike up to the hill.

I continued my tour by heading back to the old town, and eventually found myself at St Olaf's Church, with its imposing spire (believe it or not, it was apparently the highest building in the world between 1549 and 1625!). I had my lunch rendez-vous coming up, but couldn't resist the temptation of climbing up to the top along the narrow, creaking staircase... Naturally, the views from the rather cramped rooftop were rather stunning...

For lunch, we relied on some quick research on Tripadvisor, and ended up in Rataskaevu16, a charming little place tucked a way a bit outside the most touristy bits of the old town. What a gem this place was. Smiling, genuinely friendly (or at least so it seemed to us ;-) service, very decent prices, a modern and tasteful interior decoration (including some archeological diggings underneath the floor of the toilet!) and most importantly, some excellent food. We spent a very relaxing couple of hours here enjoying good food, and chatting away...

Due to our rather long lunch, we didn't have much more time left in Tallinn, before catching our boat. We did have time to briefly explore Rothermanni Kvartal near the port area - a rather tastefully redeveloped warehouse district with some pretty interesting architecture. After a bit of last-minute shopping, it was time to board the boat and head back to Helsinki...

The next day, it was time to head back to France. But actually, I had quite a long stopover in Stockholm (7 hours!), so I decided to make the best of it and head into Stockholm and pay a visit to our dear friends Robert and Doan (Robert used to study with me back in Edinburgh a bunch of year ago, and thankfully we've kept in touch since...). We enjoyed a rather nice BBQ in the garden of their most impressive villa, located in a very nice, leafy suburb of Stockholm. Nice to see their little girls growing up as well! A very nice and relaxing way to end a rather hectic few days around the Baltic Sea!