7 hours in Helsinki

We are on a 41 hour cruise from Stockholm, Sweden to Helsinki, Finland and our boat arrives extra early this morning. So already at 09.15 AM we stand outside the terminal and start walking towards the city.

Buba is cute as usual <3

Breakfast at Café Strindberg

The weather is nice and the vendors at Kauppatori greet us happily when we cross the square. Our first mission is to get some breakfast and we head to Café Strindberg located at Pohjoisesplanaadi.

If you recognized the name I can confirm that yes! It’s the same Strindberg as the author whose home in Stockholm we visited just a couple of weeks ago!

Finnish design and cool maximalistic interior details

After the breakfast we are drawn in to a Marimekko store. Marimekko is one of the finnish design wonders and have stedily kept its positions in the fashion world since 1949 when Maija Isola and Armi Ratia came together and started to produce and market the brands iconic big patterns.

The shop is like a maze and we end up exiting inside a shopping mall and a very nice interior design store called My oh my home.

I marvel at everything and want to buy everything but realize that it may not be a good idea to start carrying around a big dog with a watering can-head all around Helsinki.

“Look! It looks like Strindberg!” Buba says. And indeed the very rudimentary attempt to create a Testa di Moro type of vase really looks looks like Strindberg! Haha

Next to My oh My there is an even more amazing shop with maximalistic interior details and clothes with psychadelic patterns that remind me of russian folklore.
Its Klaus Haapaniemi shop.

You may know Klaus Haapaniemi as the designer behind Iittalas collection Taika. He has long been seen as one of the most interesting up and coming Finnish designers. We find some table ware from Taika at the store but I mostly love the crazy cushions and the delicate silk clothing with the amazing patterns.

Oodi the public livingroom

I realize that we dont have enough time to go to any museum so we head to Oodi. Oodi is like the livingroom of the Helsinkians. It is a combined library where you also can book different types of creative spaces and tools. Either for free or for a very low fee. Here you can 3d-print, lazer cut wood, sow, book a small studio and so on.
It is all that Kulturhuset in Stockholm originally was designed to be but which is not.

Oodi was full of visitors and we admired the interesting building it resides in.

Löyly Sauna and food

It takes around 30 minutes to walk to our main destination on this trip – the sauna, Löyly!
Finland has a very long sauna tradition, which you can read about here, and i am sooooo looking forward to finally get to sauna again! I usually only get to do it when we visit relatives in finland, because Sweden doesn’t have the same culture and its kind of hard to find a good sauna in Stockholm.

Löyly sauna has 4 different saunas which you can read more about here

Walk back to the boat

All nice and relaxed we check out the artwall outside of Löyly and then we walk by the seaside back to the boat!

In summary – a lovely day!
Xoxo/Salla V