Ever been to Helsinki? That's in Finland incase you were wondering. Well, I spent yesterday in Helsinki and had an amazing time. It may or may not have been incredible because we had a handsome Finnish man giving us a private tour of the place but I will leave that for you to decide.
The journey began Friday night at 10pm as we got on a bus.
It was going to be a long ride. Literally 9 hours all night long. I don't sleep on buses. Or planes. Or anything else that doesn't allow me to be in a horizontal position. So I figured a little Dramamine would help... Except if you take the non drowsy one... And your bus driver plates music all night and you forget your eye mask and your ear plugs. Worst night ever. You then spend the night trying countless positions to get somewhat comfortable in your one by one foot seat while te bus rocks and shakes with lights and music. Annoying to say the leastZ and as you can guess it was miserable. So at 7am we pull into the bus station and the journey to the hostel begins. An hour later we are walking aimlessly around a square with no idea where this hostel is. We got off turned at the Rimi went through the parking garage and turned on USS street but guess what we were far away from the hostel. So it turns out the instructions we had and followed were the right instructions just in the wrong area of town.
Finally by 8 we found the hostel, changed, left our stuff and started the journey to the ferry.
The ferry was huge! It was like a cruise ship. Seriously!
We played bingo. And Mikele won! She won this huge chocolate bar. Then karaoke started.
The girls sang baby baby something justin bieber and dedicated it to me. Right before they went up this cutie came and sat by us. Trust me I had noticed him sitting behind us. Then the karaoke started which was beautiful. After we had fun talking with Juho (u-ho) and for awhile I though it was uhaul because I couldn't understand him or hear him lol. Then we docked in Helsinki. He took us to the bus station and helped the girls buy tickets to the Helsinki temple and got them to the bus station. Turns out their bus was on the corner and they had to high tail it waving their arms and barely made it on. I stayed with Hannah to party. Hannah is catholic so going to the temple is not really her scene lol. Then our personal tour began. Seriously how nice is he!? He took us through the town and someone was handing out cheese. Cheese! They were handing out tubs of cheese so I pocketed one of those and then came the juice box samples of almond milk and ladies dressed as clouds. It was weird.
We learned about crazy day which is a huge sale that happens. Everyone was carrying around yellow bags of items. I would compare it to Black Friday here. It was a little crazy. Our journey then took us to the harbor where there were traditional foods and a market set up. Juho showed us how to buy tickets to get on the boat to get to this island fortress and then he came with us!
Let's not judge my looks here okay. Cold. Windy. 48 hours of no sleep and no shower. Ew but those two look cute so it's going up. Ps the person taking the selfie always has a huge head and why does that have to be me, I already have a big head to start with!
This island fortress was beautiful! We touched the Baltic Sea, walked along the fortress walls and fall colored tree lines paths.
We went in the tunnels of the old fort and explored. I wish the pictures could do justice.
It was one of the most beautiful places I have seen in Europe.
After our island adventure we took the boat back and Juho showed us a beautiful lake.
Then he had to head back to his home. So we said goodbye and then took some selfies in the park.
We had to meet up the the other girls at 5:00 and decided we needed some bread to go with our cheese we had been carrying around. After twenty minutes of failed bread finding Hannah asked a lady and she took us all the way there. The Finnish are so nice. We headed to the church
And devoured our cheese and bread on those steps.
The girls arrived and we were reunited.
More walking. We spend so much time walking. Walking. Walking. And it's cold! Worried about our ten day vacation.
Helsinki rocked and like I said, you can decide why. ;)
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