We’d rented an AirBnb apartment, because fitting five people into hotels is very hard. The apartment was pretty central, and it turned out to be an on-repeat-rental, as the closets were closed with screwed brackets, and the care and cleaning were being handled by some company, even though we stayed in contact with the owners as needed. It suited us very nicely, and we very much enjoyed our stay!
We decided to start the trip with a bang, and our first full-day activity was the local roller-coaster park, Linnanmäki.
Sunday 06 August 2023
At the Helsinki central train station in Finland. (You can immediately tell this is not from Iceland, because there are zero trains in Iceland!)
The day began at the airport in Keflavík, where Bjarki and Emma struck up a rare united front to beg for candy to eat on the plane.
One day I will cave in and buy myself an aurora- or lava-decorated hair-brush!
Breakfast at the Jómfrúin restaurant at the airport. It was undergoing an expansion, which seemed to confuse people as to whether they were even open, so we were the only ones there for a while. Finnur thankfully took Emma on to more “mainstream” food, as she’s not the food-adventurous type.
Mmmm, open sandwiches! Bjarki’s smoked salmon was amazing!
All five by the Erró art-wall that’s the last thing you see before walking to the terminals.
We flew to Finland with Finnair, because they had a more “sensible” departure time than Icelandair. I’m not a fan of waking up in the middle of the night to haul ass to the airport.
Approaching our destination.
We’d decided to just use public transportation rather than rent a car. The train-ride to downtown took about 50 comfortable minutes.
Arty walls at one stop.
We decided to walk from the main train station to our apartment rather than try to find how the bus/subway system worked.
Found it!
In the living room. Very Scandinavian!
The well-equipped kitchen.
The master bedroom.
Kid-bedroom #1.
Toilet and laundry.
Kid bedroom #2. There was a whole heavy door hanging over the bed! This is apparently not an earthquake zone!
The bathroom was lovely, and had both a big tub and a shower, as in: something for everybody!
Dinner was at a nearby noodle-place, which was so busy fulfilling remote orders (lots of pick-up dudes there in line) that we played a game of Skyjo while we waited for our very tasty food to arrive.
The house we were staying in. We walked to a nearby supermarket/mall to pick up some food essentials.
It took a while, and a lot of Google translate, but we finally found some lactose-free whole-milk. Finland seems to be all about the semi-skimmed milk.
Finnish above, Swedish below. It breaks down to “collective-traffic-terminal”, and yes, this was the medium-sized Kamppi mall with a bus and train terminal in the basement, and sub-basement. Finnish turned out to have quite a few similar words to Icelandic, but the spelling was wildly different. For example the Icelandic word for street is “gata”, and in Finnish it’s “katu” which is phonetically very similar. Thus our house on Eerikinkatu turned out to be on a very Icelandic Eiríksgata, or Eric’s Street.
Attempting to figure out just what type of public-transport-tickets I should buy for our stay to minimize the total cost…
Monday 07 August 2023
We managed to crawl out of the house at noon. The building had an old-style elevator, which, spoiler alert, would come in handy a few days later.
Waiting for public transport to take us to a roller-coaster park. Pretty streets are pretty!
We passed the central station we’d arrived at the day before, and noticed the Ukrainian flag flying high. I suspect Finland would prefer to stay un-invaded by Russia.
We found roller-coasters!
Map acquired. We quickly decided to split up into boys vs girls, as the boys were feeling a lot more adventurous than us girls.
First things first, finishing off some boba-tea in front of the spooky house.
The Ferris wheel had excellent views.
In line for the spooky house. Yes, it was a day of standing in lines.
Yup, all wood! Apparently, every piece has been replaced at least five times since it was originally built, to keep it safe. It was a good ride!
Next line had the girls playing rock, paper, scissors.
The signage was absolutely no help whatsoever. This was a restaurant.
Thankfully the menu was in English!
Excited for food in the sun!
The boys joined us for eating, after which Finnur tapped out, and I took the kiddos on a last-round type thing. This is us going for round two in the water-ride.
Round two in the Ferris-wheel. Helsinki is remarkably flat.
Be still my heart!
Roller-coaster designers are insane!
We finally decided to call it quits at 18:30, after a very fun day.
