Helsinki on Sunday

[M&T]

We will be in Helsinki on a Sunday in mid July. Will all of the stores be closed and the market hall?

[barante]

Unfortunately, you will be out of luck. The colorful market place at the harbor will be closed, so will be most of the stores. (There may be something open in the tunnel near the Central Railroad Station). All is not lost, however. You can do lots of sightseeing on your own.

Recommendations:

For a quick -- and cheap -- basic tour of the Helsinki city center, take the No. 3 streetcar line. You get a pretty good idea of the city (minus suburbs). If you buy an all-day ticket, you can step off and in. All the announcements are in three languages, including English. For example, they will tell you that you are at the Parliament House.

Another cheap treat is taking the ferryboat from the Inner Harbor (where your ship, in all likelihood, is berthed) to Suomenlinna, an old island fortress just 20 minutes outside of Helsinki. It's a center for artists these days, so something ought to be open.

Yet another nice way of spending some time is a visit to Seurasaari, a museum peninsula within Helsinki city limits. You can get there by public transportation, although I forget which bus. You can stroll through it (there is a nice restaurant as well) at leisure. If you are lucky, you might even bump into the president of Finland. She is a nice lady and is usually without bodyguards (or they are invisible at the very least).

The possibilities are unlimited. You might even want to go to one of the huge Lutheran churches and see how empty they are. That's why there is a special "church tax" to support them. Anything else, let me know. Yes, there is also an amusement park called Linnanmäki. Its top attraction, from my vantage point, is a wooden roller coaster, creaky and scary as hell. If it has caused fatalities, they have not been reported.

Two more comments. You will loveTallinn, which has a very walkable walled-in Old Town (My brother lives there, lucky guy). Truth to be told, Tallinn now has better stores than Helsinki, because about 30 ferries plough the narrow gulf each day, bringing thousands of Finns for a day of shopping and carousing. You get the idea if I tell you that at the Helsinki disembarkation point they have supermarket-sized shopping carts available for free to help all the Finns to bring in the loot (mostly cheaper alcohol, but also everything from meats to butter, which were originally produced in Finland but are, for tax reasons, cheaper in Estonia).

You will also love St. Petersburg. An exquisite place and, again, very walkable and with a workable subway and streetcar system. Take it in, while you can, because the Russian noveau rich want to build skyscrapers there.

You will have a marvelous time. Don't worry about shopping in Helsinki. With the dollar being what it is, you couldn't afford it.

[realproperty]

We were there 2 summers ago. If you go to the tourist office on the main esplanade, you can get a free walking tour guide to Helsinki and just follow it around town. Finland has an interesting history particulary around WWII. Caught in the middle of a bunch of nasty neighbours. We found prices in Helsinki quite high; lots of Marimekko so do some price comparisons before you go if that interests you. The rock church is supposed to be awesome, we missed it but our friends raved about it. The rest of the town was quite forgettable. Save your shopping dollars for Stockholm, the big surprise of the trip. We could have spent another day or two there. A magnificent city with great quality shopping.

[barante]

If you are keen on buying Finnish design stuff, from Marimekko etc., try Tallinn. Marimekko has a boutique there and prices are far lower.

[stanj]

You will also love St. Petersburg. An exquisite place and, again, very walkable and with a workable subway and streetcar system. Take it in, while you can, because the Russian noveau rich want to build skyscrapers there.

You will have a marvelous time. Don't worry about shopping in Helsinki. With the dollar being what it is, you couldn't afford it.

Generally I agree with your recommendations concerning what to see in Helsinki but the above quote is way off the mark. Few cities have such univeral demand by the citizens to preserve the look and feel of the historic center of the city. It is not legal to build higher than 5 stories in the "Inner Fontanka", the main historic city center. There is a great deal of construction going on in the further out bedroom areas however, most being 14-25 stories of new apartments being built by the hundreds of projects. I used to live in one of the new areas of high rises and could see 20-25 high rise apartment buildings going up at any given time from my balcony. The city center is one gigantic museum with the greatest area of essentially uninterupted original historic buildings of any city. Almost all have been restored in recent years. No New Russian is going to put up a hight rise, or even a modern looking building in the middle ot that. That is why I love SPb. It is protecting its unique character.

Stan

[barante]

You are the man, Stan. But I worked and lived five years in Moscow, enough time to teach me never to underestimate the greed and thuggish ways of the Russian noveau rich!