In December 2023 I travelled to Europe to explore parts of Finland, Germany, and Ireland.
Our trip began by departing a hot summer’s day in Sydney. In typical Sydney summer style, the hot day developed into a huge afternoon thunderstorm. Lightning, thunder and rain poured down on our plane as we pushed back from the gate. We didn’t make it very far, the plane stopped for over two hours waiting for the storm to pass.
The flights to get from Sydney to Helsinki, passed through Singapore and London. Because of the late departure from Sydney, we were subsequently delayed in Singapore, and then missed our connecting flight in London. British Airways went beyond our expectations in their handling of the missed connection. We landed at Heathrow early Christmas morning, waiting for us at the arrival gate was our boarding passes for our rebooked flights and a 10 quid meal voucher apologising for the delay.
Greeting our landing in Helsinki was fresh snow on the ground.
We quickly caught a train to the city centre and checked into our hotel. Despite over 30 hours of travel, Nordic winter darkness and light snow falling, as it was only 4pm we found the energy after to explore the Senate Square and the Esplanadi.
The following morning, after sleeping for almost 12 hours (we fell asleep at 7.30pm the evening before), we left the hotel and explored the Senate Square area again this time in daylight. Continuing along the snow covered streets we found parts of the inner harbour frozen solid and an Orthodox Church overlooking the harbour inlets.
At the harbour we hopped on a ferry which travelled out to the Suomenlinna Sea Fortress.
After a few hours walking around the interconnected islands we headed back to the Helsinki mainland. During the afternoon the weather dropped from -2c to -6c and the wind picked up. We caught a tram across the city to explore some of the surrounding neighbourhoods however by this time we were feeling jetlagged, cold, and slightly lost. During our exploration we came across a park with locals enjoying ice skating and a beautiful old church, before we found our way back to our hotel for the evening.
Overnight more snow fell, we left the hotel at 7.30am as the street sweepers cleared the snow from the city roads and headed to the Old Market Hall for breakfast. After eating one Salmon Soup and one Reindeer Soup we headed off to a mall to buy warmer clothes. The snow continued to fall across the day, and for the first time I experienced movie like crystal shaped snow flakes were collecting in our hair and clothes. As the snow got more heavy we headed to the airport to fly north to Lapland.
