"Helsingfors - Helsinki" a Helsinki Travel Page by kit_mc

I've been to Helsinki (Helsingfors in Swedish, which is the minority language of Finland) a few times now and when I go I normally just hang out with my friends and don't do much of the tourist thing. My first time in Helsinki was just a day trip, overnight on the ferry from Sweden in the middle of the winter in 1997. Having just survived a night surrounded with drunk Swedish teenagers staggering around the decks, I was less than impressed that I'd made the effort at all.

The weather that day had been miserable, really wet rather than snowy and it had got dark really early. With such sour and rather unforgiving memories, for my visit in 2002, I'm glad that I've been able to visit again a few times including once for a lovely summer break with my Finnish friends.

Helsinki is not a big city, so you can see most of the sights by foot or you could take tram line 3T which does a circuit of the city, passing many of the major tourist sights such as the cathedral in Senate Square, Alvar Aalto's Finlandia Hall and the Parliament Building . If you go in the summer, try to get out into the archipelago and visit the old island fortress of Suomenlinna. It's beautiful out there, you can hardly believe that your so close to a capital city.

I've really had fun in Helsinki, mainly because I've stayed with my friends who have been my very own tourist guides.

Kiasma, the Contemporary Art Museum is kind of wierd and goes on for far too long, but the ethnographic museum in Tennishallen is pretty cool if you're interested in world cultures. And then you can pop into the cinema next door for a bit of (American) 'pop culture'.

Helsinki is not a large city and so you can explore much of it on foot and admire landmarks such as the train station, Aalto's Finlandia Hall and the many Art Nouveau buildings.