My ex-husband with his new family moved to Helsinki at the beginning of January this year. Because, of course, he didn’t want to lose contact with our daughter, we agreed on some approximate plan of visits. Once we will travel there, once they will arrive here and we will be regularly switching. Despite we were discussing also the possibility of sending Ema alone (and one of my friends, who used to be flight attendant in the past, was convincing me that it is really safe as they have special, very detailed and strict instructions on how to care about such passengers), when I just started to think about sending her alone with the big plane to the faraway country with foreign people, fainting attempted me.

So, we chose the spring holidays as the best time for the first visit, bought quite cheap flight tickets and started to look forward to this adventure.

Already a few days before we left, it was on News that a storm Dennis was coming to North Europe and that it would cause cold weather with strong wind and rain. Just the weather you want to have when you are supposed to fly somewhere. Fortunately, the flight was not that bad, despite several quite strong turbulences.

After approximately 2 hours flight, we landed in Helsinki on Sunday, February 16th around 3 pm and I was really enjoying the arrival. I have already been to Helsinki a few years ago so I remembered the beautiful nature which the airport is surrounded by. Basically, it is in the middle of a forest and it is amazing.

We spent in Helsinki great almost five days with lots of resting, chatting and spending time together. We also went to visit a few sights but as it was really cold, windy and often even rainy, we didn’t manage to stay outside for a long time. However, we visited Esplanadi with the statue of Johan Ludwig Runeberg, the Market Square, the Harbour with the huge ships heading towards Estonia, the Allas Sea Pool (we just passed around and there were really people coming out of the sauna and jumping to the freezing sea!), the Helsinki Cathedral, and we also spent lots of time in the new Helsinki Central Library – Oodi.

  • The Runeberg’s statue
  • The Harbour
  • The Cathedral

The library is actually an amazing place! It is not just a library but some kind of community center where you can do million various things. For example, you can rent 3D printer there, large format printer, laser cutter, cloth printer, sewing machines, Playstation, graphic tablet with Adobe Creative cloud, or even the whole multimedia recording studio. I was really amazed by this place.

  • Oodi inside

Anyway, besides spending lots of time in the library, where we were able to talk while kids were playing, we also managed to visit some great food places like for example pizzeria which is supposed to be the best one in Helsinki – Putte’s (it was really great!) or a local burger place called Hesburger, and we also bought many local sweets (of course) to enjoy at home. We also celebrated Ema’s birthday. My baby is already 9 years old!

  • Laskiaispulla filled with whipped cream and jam
  • Runebergin torttu
  • Ema’s birthday Green apple cake

Because of the tons of the great food we ate, I also needed to go running just to make sure not to exceed the weight limit to be allowed on the plane. Despite I planned my running route in a detail, I got lost twice during the first run, which is clearly visible on the map :D. At least, during the second one I already knew where I was going, so it wasn’t that bad.

I have to say that we were really enjoying the stay despite not the best weather and I am really looking forward to going back there soon 🙂

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