Helsinki Evening Activities and Restaurants

[Jamietravelstheworld]

We will be overnighting in Helsinki in July (instead of St. Petersburg). Looking for suggestions of evening activities or restaurants. Not finding much through online searches. Concert halls have no performances. 

 

Jamie

[Hezu]

9 hours ago, Jamietravelstheworld said:

We will be overnighting in Helsinki in July (instead of St. Petersburg). Looking for suggestions of evening activities or restaurants. Not finding much through online searches. Concert halls have no performances.

High culture venues are probably indeed closed in July as it happens to be the holiday month for most Finns, but I think there will be some popular music gigs, many in smaller venues like clubs and restaurants. It might be possible not all of these have been announced yet. And one (popular) culture option is of course cinemas. In Finland most foreign films will be shown subtitled in Finnish and Swedish rather than dubbed, so assuming you understand the original language of the movie, then it should be viable to watch also in a Finnish cinema. Couple cinema venues worth a mention are Orion and Maxim, since these have somewhat old style auditoriums with balconies. There is also outdoor cinema Kesäkino Engel, but it is not open every day and it might only start in August since nights start to get darker only then, even at the end of July sunset time in Helsinki is around 10 pm.

I'm not really a restaurant dinner eater, so I'm afraid I cannot give specific hints about restaurants, although there is quite a few of them in central Helsinki. One interesting dinner option that does pop in my mind, is the evening cruises into archipelago around Helsinki. Most of such cruises depart from the Market Square.

And one truely Finnish summer evening activity that pops into my mind is having a sauna and dip into sea or lake for a swim. In central Helsinki the easiest locations for such experience are probably Löyly (in Hernesaari, not that far from the port areas used by most cruise ships) and Allas Sea Pool (next to the Market Square, although just now the venue closed for renovations since earlier this year Viking Line cruise ferry did hit the pier next door to Allas Sea Pool causing some damage also to the latter). Of course, there exists quite a number of alternative sauna locations in Helsinki (and surroundings).

[Wendy The Wanderer]

On 3/31/2022 at 3:17 AM, Hezu said:

I think there will be some popular music gigs, many in smaller venues like clubs and restaurants. It might be possible not all of these have been announced yet.

Is there a local website that lists these events?  Like "Time Out Helsinki" or such?  We also have an overnight in July and love local live music.

[Hezu]

Couple event listings for Helsinki:

- My Helsinki

- Meteli.net (in Finnish, but I guess it might be possible to get some idea what is available and you could try online machine translators, albeit these may not cope with Finnish that well)

 

Also perhaps look at the centralized ticket sales services:

- Tiketti

- Ticket Master