Helsinki - The peaceful yet dynamic capital of Finland

Our first port of call on the Royal Caribbean Baltic Sea cruise was Helsinki, the capital of Finland and second-most northern capital city in the world.

We were greeted by beautiful parks as we stepped into the city centre. The blossoming flowers and luscious greenery, together with the warm sunny weather, made it a perfect morning to take a stroll in the park.

We were lucky to be able to visit the Market Square, which was bustling with activity with vendors selling fresh Finnish food and a wide variety of souvenirs. Jw bought this magnet (Oh do you know he's a magnet collector? My fridge has absolutely not a single inch of space left now. On the outside.) which had a pretty picture of the Aurora Borealis (otherwise known as the northern lights). I'm still hoping that I would be able to witness this magical phenomenon whilst I am living high up in the northern hemisphere.

We met a fellow Singaporean who was a vendor at the Market Square selling handmade clay earrings. It is actually pretty amazing how we can always recognise each other from our accents - that unique blend of Mandarin, English and Singlish. Talking about coincidence, we then bumped into a group of university students from Singapore, who helped us to take the picture above.
 

Next, we visited the Uspenski Cathedral, a Eastern orthodox cathedral, which was situated on top of a hill. That meant exercise time for jw who had to lift the pram, plus the baby, up the flights of stairs.

This was the beautiful interior of the church. Admission was free!

After we got down the hill, jw decided to buy a bottle of 7-up to quench his thirst. To our amazement, it cost a shocking price of 3 euros! I was going to make sure I didn't waste a single bubble of that fizz.

We also bought this lovely-looking knitted strawberry beanie for Angel. I thought she looked incredibly cute, and somewhat yummylicious, in it.

For lunch, we decided to dine in a traditional Finnish restaurant. We had grilled seabass, reindeer meat along with some Finnish beer. I wouldn't say it was a finger-licking good lunch that we had, but definitely something unique.

After lunch, we decided to go on a boat ride to take a closer look at the beautiful waters and surrounding archipelago.

Angel was a pretty elated baby on this ride and that was enough to make any mum feel happy too. 

Here were some of the views that we took on the boat ride. We had to break through ice, cross a super narrow bridge and eventually we did see some fine-looking scenery before we headed back to our cruise ship. What we enjoyed the most was the pleasant breeze and radiating sunshine on the ride.

This was one of my favourite pictures from this entire holiday. Everything just looked and felt so peaceful and tranquil, and there was this feeling of contentment just holding my little baby in my arms.

Well, that marked the end of a short day trip in Helsinki. We were glad to have had the chance to set foot in this modern capital city!

Check out more updates from the other ports of call on this cruise: St Petersburg (Russia), Riga (Lativa), Gdansk (Poland)

To see more of the world, visit my Travelogue page here.

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Here's a simple video I did that shows the highlights of the entire Baltic cruise. Enjoy viewing!



For a complete list of my videos, click here.