A visitors guide to Helsinki

What should you do if you're visiting Helsinki?

It's a pleasant city to just walk around, admiring the buildings while eating an ice cream, and a good starting point is the Kauppatori where you'll find the Havis Amanda statue, regarded as a symbol of the city.

Here you can get ferries out to explore the islands, and top of the list of must-dos is the superb fortress island of Suomenlinna which is a Unesco World Heritage Site:

Back on the mainland first head towards the impressive Orthodox cathedral with its characteristic onion topped domes, gleaming in the sunlight.

Nearby is a harbour with a number of lovely old wooden boats. I never did work out how to get trips on them, but guess they might be reserved for parties from the many cruise ships that dock here.

Towering over the city is the Tuomiokirkko, a neoclassical Lutheran cathedral (top of page). Inside its plainly decorated with the exception of its magnificent organ:

If you get a chance its definitely worth the 20 minute or so walk to the Temppeliaukio church cut into sold rock it has the feel of a James Bond set:

A little further away in the Sibelius Park you'll find the Sibelius Monument:

You can walk almost the whole way around Helsinki by the sea which gives you great views of all the boats bobbing in the cool dark waters of the Bay of Finland.

There's a lot of art and music in Helsinki too. When I was there (summer 2012) the Ateneum art gallery (near the station) had a major exhibition of the Finnish artist Helene Schjerfbeck and you can usually hear live bands playing in Esplanade Park.

I managed to eat in a number of good restaurants, namely:

• Elite: this is a bit off the beaten track and I stumbled upon it by accident, but it was a treat, my favourite. Worth making an effort clothes-wise. Classic Finnish cuisine well prepared with great atmosphere
• Toscanini: a city centre Italian which understands that Italy cuisine is more than just pizzas. 
• Salve: at the south of the city this sailor themed restaurant is Finnish cuisine based but more relaxed than Elite. I had the two course special that included a free ticket to the Atenium art gallery.

All in all a very pleasant city with much to see and do.

Helsinki's sea fortress: Suomenlinna

What's this? A ship appearing from the mists? Could it be the enemy?

Man the guns!!

Take aim....

Requesting permission to open fire!

Actually these pictures are from the sea fort off Helsinki called Suomenlinna. It hasn't exactly won glory in battle: when it was attached by an Anglo-French fleet in the Crimean war it apparently had the wrong sort of guns or something.

Anyhow its a highly recommended excursion 20 minutes or so boat ride from the city. Some more pictures below, starting with the big dry dock that was meant to be full of old sail boats but wasn't:

Helsinki photos

Some photos from Helsinki where the weather has turned out rather nice.

iPhone vs DSLR

I was standing on the shoreline this evening looking out at the Gulf of Finland and there was this rather nice old boat sailing by.

I took a picture with the iPhone (above) and then with a Canon 550 DSLR with 300 mm lens (below) to see what how they compared to help Tillerman with his question.

While the DSLR might be heavier there is a good reason why I lug it around.

Photographic tip

Most old towns look even better with a couple of tall ships moored in the harbour.

Also helps if its sunny.    

One beach, two pictures, four elements

Finlaggan and Islay

As O'Docker correctly spotted the previous days post was of the CalMac ferry on the way to Islay with the Paps of Jura in the background .

One of the top clues was the name of the ship, namely Finlaggan.

Finlaggan, the ruins of which can be seen in the photo above, is at the centre of Islay and was once the seat of the Lord of the Isles who ruled the Scottish isles from Islay to Skye. They controlled the sea lanes with Viking style galleys for around four hundred years from 1098.

The house we were staying in was nearby and often we'd walk down there in the evening, our heads enveloped by a cloud of midges.

During the day we'd go to the beach, for unlike the washout in London, we were lucky with the weather:

A wonderful island.

Picture puzzle: where and what?

Time for another picture puzzle.

Using the clues in the picture and the itinerary yesterday:

1. Where was I for the weekend?
2. What are those hills in the background?

And for a bonus point, if I tell you there's a clue somewhere there as to what my room looked over, where was it?

Oh and Tillerman wants us bloggers to say something about good photographic technique. Well obviously the answer is ask O'Docker (natch) but three tips here:
a) Plan ahead: the ferry cross-over that made this pic possible could be predicted by the time table
b) If you ...er... didn't actually plan ahead as I you should, don't spend all your time head in a book but every now and then go on deck to have a look around
c) Pictures with both something in the foreground and background are usually more interesting than just having one of them.

Back again

So now I'm back after four days away from London. The journey home took just over 12 hours and included travelling by car, ferry, coach, bus, plane, tube and taxi.

Did I miss anything?

What's on the fourth plinth now?

Replacing Nelson's ship in a bottle, a homage to "the heroism of growing up"
 

Theatre review: One Man, Two Guvnors - in three words

Very very funny

The Cutty Sark is closed on Mondays

A top tip for those in London.

If the weather is great and you wonder if it would be worth taking Monday off work to visit the Cutty Sark, then don't.

The Cutty Sark is closed on Mondays.
 

Diamond Jubilee's Biggest Poster and Culture in Stone

When Liz goes boating next weekend (along with 1,000 other vessels) she will pass this epically big poster from the Silver Jubilee back in 1977.

100 x 70 metres it has been hung on the sides of Sea Container house between Waterloo and Blackfriars.

I was a bit worried about the office workers stuck behind it, their windows darkened by the royal images, as in years gone by I've been to many a meeting there. But fortunately it's currently being renovated.

At its base you'll find the Gallery@Oxo which is currently showing an exhibition of Shona sculpture from Zimbabwe called "Culture in stone" - small but well worth visiting.

More pictures from: Culture in stone

Top 100 Travel Blog

Yesterday's post might have seemed a bit off-topic.

What was the boating angle? you might have asked. There were no shots of spinnakers flying, kayak blades cutting the water or Laser sailors doing handstands.

However those Technorati blog watching servers would have approved.

I don't often check out what Technorati thinks of this blog so didn't expect to find it in the top 100 travel blogs - actually hovering just outside the top 50.

Which was surprising as in the last year or two travel opportunities have been limited. While previously I'd been to interesting places like Venezuela's Orinoco Delta and the remote monasteries of Georgia recent posts have usually been restricted to London.

But why look further? In a recent survey by TripAdvisor London was voted the number one tourist destination for 2012.

Quite right too: as Samuel Johnson once said "when a man is tired of blogging about London he is tired of blogging."

Or something like that.


Updated: now top 50 (just):

Cardiff Castle and Bay

Today they skies have been blue and rain cloud free for the first time in.... ooooh... weeks.

And it was on a similarly sunny day several weeks ago that I took the train to Cardiff, just two hours from London. The main reason for the trip was to witness a bailiff go about his business which was most informative and efficiently done.

So I had time to visit Cardiff Castle with its Norman keep (above) and surrounding walls that were used as air raid shelters in WW2:

The was a background sound track of bombs falling as Vera Lynn sung about bluebirds and the white cliffs of Dover, a combination that always moves me.

Within the walls there is a fantastic Victorian mansion with fake medieval banqueting hall, mock Arabic room with "jelly mould" Moorish ceiling and a "the butler did it" library:

All very impressive.

After that I was hungry so went down to Cardiff Bay for lunch. Its a bit out from the centre, too far to walk easily, so I took taxis though there is a train.

It seemed pretty familiar as a couple of episodes of Doctor Who were filmed there (as well as, I understand, some other TV programs).

Despite the restaurants being full it had an empty feel: the marina, for example, had just a couple of boats moored up.

Cardiff Bay is a space too big for the people in it (now that is a real Doctor Who sentence)

Then it was back to London and the tube in rush hour, which most definitely didn't have an empty feel to it.

The les cascades run from Flaine to Sixt

The 14km long les cascades ski run from Flaine to Sixt is according to Wikipedia "a classic". I didn't know that at the time, just that it was a very, very long blue line that went all the way across the piste map, seemingly on and on forever.

The weather being bright but very, very cold I decided to give it a go, taking the gondola from Flaine up to Les Grandes Plateires, then down serpentine until I reached the start (above) before heading off into the wilds (below).

But is les cascades right for you? First lets consider its strong points:

• Its great scenery, from Alpine peaks to deserted valleys, then down to wiggle through wild forests
• It's less busy than the main slopes: for about two thirds of the way I was completely on my own, seeing no one at all. When I stopped all I could hear was a solitary bird singing and sometimes the sound of snow falling from a tree hidden in the wood
• You get all types of runs in one, from cross-country, to green, blue and even a little bit of red
• At the end you zoom along a track between trees, across narrow bridges and around the sort of corners that would make Jeremy Clarkson go "orch, orch, orch!"
• You get a real sense of achievement by completing it
• You can reward yourself at the end can get a chocolate chaud for €2.50 rather than the €3.90 at the bar at the top of Les Grandes Platiers
• Afterwards you get to explore the rest of the Grand Massif by heading from Samoens over the top via Grands Vans back to Flaine

However:

• There are four or five very flat bits where you have to walk
• There are no opportunities to stop and escape the cold in a restaurant, you just have to keep going
• The snow at the Sixt end isn't quite as good as in Flaine - a bit icy even, with chunks of ice scattered across the run
• That bit of the run is also narrow with no edges and if you slide off you'd fall down a steep edge
• You will have get a bus from Sixt to Samoens: it's pretty simple and regular (and free!) but that's 20 minutes you're not skiing
• You need to buy a more expensive ski pass to cover both Massif and Flaine

In the end it took me about three and half hours from starting at the top of mountain to finally returning to Flaine the long way round, but that included half an hour or so for lunch.

All in all I'd certainly recommend it: it allows you to ski through amazing scenery along near empty runs and feel you've achieved something.

Les cascades is certainly not your average run: it is indeed a classic.

The big slush

I'm having trouble taking the "big freeze" story seriously.

My flight into Heathrow might have been delayed over 2 hours but as I walked down the steps and breathed the sweet smell of aviation fuel my impression was of balmy weather.

At 2 - 3C it was about 30 degrees higher than I'd experienced the same time the day before, and there was just a thin layer of slush rather than several metres of packed snow:

Maybe I'll feel differently tomorrow during rush hour!

-25C skiing

A cold snap has hit Europe and it is currently -12C (that's 10.4F) on the streets of Geneva.

Luckily for me I've spend the day skiing in -25C conditions (that's -13F) so have to a degree (ho ho) become acclimatised.

I'm pretty sure those exposed ski lifts were even colder - maybe down to -27 or -28C (-18.4F) with wind chill so had to rely on that old reliable to warm up:

More to come as feeling returns to the fingers......