Since we had explored most of the city on our first day, we decided to try something different. Igor and I sort of have a tradition of going to the zoo when travelling. We have been to the San Diego zoo and the Frankfurt zoo, now we have been to the Helsinki zoo.
We got up late. Heidi and Kahil left early for work and allowed us to sleep in, which was very nice of them. So once we ate some breakfast and had some not too bad instant coffee and hot tea we set off to walk to the zoo. It's fun exploring this way because you end up seeing things that not many other people, outside of maybe locals, get to see. For instance, we walked by the Iranian embassy and the Chinese embassy on our way to the zoo. They just happened to be on our path. There really isn't much to see, but kind of cool all the same. It took us probably an hour to get there. We also passed this totally awesome looking obstacle course, which we vowed to come and visit if we are ever back in Helsinki during the summer. We saw a much smaller, much lousier one in Colorado earlier this year, but this one looks amazing though (sorry, I didn't get a picture of it).
Zoo Entrance and yes that is a giant sloath
One of the most awesome parts of the Helsinki zoo is that it is on an island. How many other zoos, that you know of, are on their own private island!? Anyway, because it is the dead of winter, most of the cafes and park amenities are closed for refurbishing, which makes since as there really aren't many people who want to go to a zoo in the middle of winter. A bunch of the animals were not out either since, for example the bears are in hibernation, the tropical and many of the African animals had been moved inside, etc. We still got to see a lot though.
As we walked around many of the birds of prey were out and the big cats were really active. We saw a Lynx, Mynx, snow leopard, wildcat, tigers, a lion and a bunch of other big guys. Since there were no crowds we got to get up close and see them too, which was awesome.
Mynx
reindeer
Lynx
Then we went into the African and Asian/South American animal and reptile house. It was a nice change from the cold outside to the humid tropical warmth of the reptile house. I lost Igor at one point and ended up meeting one of the animal keeper who was feeding the meerkats little cockroaches. I didn't have the guts to ask if I could feed them, mostly because I didn't want to touch the cockroaches (eww). Igor came in shortly after and we started talking to the zoo keeper more. Then Igor asked her if she would feed one of the snakes so he could see how it ate. He had never seen this before. After just a little (and we are talking really minor) hesitation she said sure and then took us to the unicorn snake (Vietnamese long nose snake aka "rhinoceros rat snake").
After we watched her eat, the keeper took us to see Igor's other favorite reptile the skink. This big guy is an especially good climber (shocker why Igor liked him). He was all over the place, on the fake rock walls of his terrarium, literally hanging on just by his finger nails. Then the keeper took him out of his cage and he was off, climbing all over her and the walls and then she let me hold him!!! Igor didn't want to. It was one of the coolest things ever. The skink climber all over my arm and then headed for my hair. The keeper pulled him off me just as he was trying to get to my head. The pictures aren't great because he moved fast and a lot but I think we got a couple of good ones in there.
We thanked the keeper immensely and then headed back outside to walk the park some more. We saw some reindeer and camels, a snowy owl and some other really big birds. Then it was time to leave and go back into the city center to meet Heidi and get some cheese cake. :)
Throughout Scandinavia there is a large department store that had a shopping center on the ground floor called Stockmann's. This is where Igor and I ate quite a few times because they have a good selection of hot foods that they make fresh and the usually have a place for you to sit down and eat. So this is where we met Heidi. She had never been there. She said it was because this is where are all the rich Swedish people come to shop and then was aptly surprised that the prices were really reasonable. Just goes to show that assumptions can keep you from really great things. You should almost always just try.
Anyway, we got cheese cake and something called a Napoleon went back to Heidi's place and she made us some Indian street food. We talked about her and her travels. Heidi put on a dvd of her favorite comedian (Fluffy for those wondering) and we watched the stand up act to the end, though Igor fell asleep about half way through.
And that was our last bit of Helsinki. Below are some additional zoo pictures.
So after standing on the back deck for about a half hour drinking beer, canoodleing, and watching Stockholm drift away as we weaved through narrow water sandwiched between tiny islands, we decided to go back inside, test the wifi and then get to the sauna before it closed.
If you know me, you know I don't do well inside boats. Put me outside where there is fresh air and a horizon and I am happy as a clam even on not so steady seas, but inside...yeah not so much. Well, I was doing alright to this point, so we got all connected and went about 100 ft down the hall and found the sauna. Of course the saunas were separate (male/female) so Igor and didn't go in together but they had a common area with hot tubs, we decided to meet up out there after. I didn't bring a swimsuit (only thing I missed in my packing because seriously who thinks of packing a swimsuit when going to northern Europe/Scandinavia/Balkans in the winter?) but thankfully they had swimsuits that you could rent, so I did. :)
Met some nice Finnish ladies in the sauna and stayed in a bit too long. I got out and felt sick from the heat and the soft rocking motion of the ship. I took an ice cold shower, which didn't help that much and went to sit out in the hot tub hall hoping that would make me feel better. Igor was already out there and so I sat for about 10 minutes listening to him talk to some other American and then decided that maybe the best thing for my nausea was to go lay down. So I left Igor to play in the sauna a bit longer and went back to the room and laid down for a while. It helped. Igor came in and sat with me after a little bit and then about an hour later I got hungry so I went in search of food. (A good sign after nausea). The only thing that wasn't really expensive was the cafe, one floor up, so I went there. It was quiet and the food was pretty good so I had a quick bite and then went back down stairs.
Igor was already asleep when I got in, which was fine with me, now full and it was nearly midnight I was ready to sleep too. I got all tucked in and was asleep within minutes. We woke up a little bit later to the ship slowing considerably and the engines making a lot of noise. Turns out they were making an intermediary stop somewhere, at an island between Sweden and Finland called Mariehamn. Thankfully, it was pretty quick and we were back in the open water and asleep in no time.
In the morning we got up, had a quick bite to eat in the cafe again, packed all our things and ran back up to the top deck in time to see our approach into the Helsinki Harbor.
Our host from Stockholm was nice enough to help us find a host in Helsinki. We had tried and failed to find anyone ourselves and as it turns out that was a blessing. The girl we ended up staying with was named Heidi (pronounced in Finnish as Hadey). She was great! She met us near the harbor at Uspenski Cathedral and then walked us to the main square Christmas market at Helsinki Cathedral. Then she took us back to her place so that we could drop our bags and she could finish up some things around the house.
Heidi had a very nice place, small, homey and filled with her own style. She was super sweet and made us some Indian chai, which was fantastic, we talked for awhile and then Igor and I headed out to check out the town. We took the very short subway ride into the center of Helsinki and started our walk the earth tour. We stopped in a bunch of coffee and bread shops (Emery there was even one that was serving Hungarian Goulash!). Finally deciding on one we sat down and had a nice hot cup of coffee with some bread and various dips. Our favorite was some sort of garlic spread that was totally awesome. Then we were out the door and walked through several Christmas markets, testing all sorts of things from jams to jerkys, cheese, bread, candy. It was all really good. We found one vendor on the main square that was nice enough to sell us something in Swedish money, because that was all I had on me at the time. She was super sweet and let us try all her traditional Finnish candy that she makes her self in the forest somewhere a couple hours from Helsinki.
Christmas market
Helsinki Cathedral
If at this point you are thinking "how could they possible still have daylight if the sun goes down at 3," remember that our boat got in at about 11 so we had lots of time. We went to another Christmas market about an hours saunter away from the last one, right on the water near where we had come in. They were selling reindeer wraps (similar to a kebab with reindeer meat), so of course we got one. Thankfully, they took cards because I figured it would be pushing our luck to find two people in the same day to take our Swedish money. By the way really yummy, and not at all gamey like I thought it might be. We decided to walk and eat at the same time, which as it turns out was maybe not the best idea. Igor finished his half of our reindeer kebab really fast, but as usually, I was taking my sweet time, when a seagull dive bombs me. I ducked behind Igor and out of the way and then another came at me. All of a sudden they were everywhere and Igor was laughing as I stuffed the rest of my kebab in my mouth (huge mouth full by the way) to protect it from being bird food. Not my best move I will add, as seconds later I started to choke on it, which also sent Igor into a giggle fit and me too once I had got some air. Not my most glamorous moment but hey that's what makes memories, right?
Old Market Place
on the way to the harbor
So our eventful afternoon continued, we kept walking through Helsinki, decided to find out where we could get our ferry tickets to Tallinn. We walked down to the harbor and got our tickets for the two hour ferry trip, we werent't as lucky this time but no matter.
By this time it was almost dark and Igor let me navigate us to the central square where the Helsinki Cathedral was. We had been there earlier in the day talking to some guys about fishing and where the best spots where in Finland. Problem was I hadn't been looking at the map all day, I had just been letting Igor lead, which in this case was not a good thing at all, as we were supposed to be meeting up with Heidi at 6pm. We were a few minutes late but we made it all the same, because I asked Igor to take back over and figure out where we were. We arrived at the square and met Heidi just in time to see the St. Lucia ceremony start. I am not going to really explain what it is all about, it will take too much time, but the super short version is that it used to coincide with winter solstice when the Julian Calendar was the universal calendar and has continued to be a big thing throughout Scandinavia ever since.
We watched the ceremony, which was ehh, but the best part was on our way back to Heidi's after. She told us that there was an orchestra playing in the subway tunnel and that they were really, really good. They had been playing the theme song to a tv Igor and I really like called "Game of Thrones." It just so happened that they were still there when we got to the tunnel. They finished their first song and Igor requested that they play the "Game of Thrones" theme song, of course they did! Igor talked about this for the whole next week (no joke). And still sometimes hums it at random intervals throughout the day. Yes, it was that good and the video doesn't even begin to do it justice. It was like our own semi-private symphony.
The rest of the evening was spent finding some food to make for Heidi and her husband. Having fun making veggie stirfry and then staying up late chatting as Igor and Kahil (Heidi's Indian husband) fell asleep early. :)
So the way that I am thinking about this is that I will break our trip down into parts which will coincide with the cities that we visit. So that would make this post a continuation of part 1, as we are as far as you are concerned, is still in Stockholm.
Our first real day in Stockholm, we woke up a bit late and then Igor made a great breakfast for all of us. Simple but yummy, eggs, bread (toasted) and some veggies. Then we were off. Avinash was staying home to plan his next trip to I think it was Columbia and Igor and I set out to do as we do and walk the earth. We had only made it to the bus station when we noticed that the Stockholmians seemed to have even more Christmas spirit than Americans, as we watched several Santa Claus' board the metro. One is strange, two a coincidence, three makes you start to question, four...ok what's going on. Next stop on the train, 15+ little kids, adults, teens...ok seriously what the heck is happening? We get off at the central station and they are everywhere, and when I say everywhere I mean, every where!!! So now we are very suspicious. We get to the central park just outside of the central metro station and there are hundreds. We were right in the middle of the warm up routine for the Santa Run. Yes, it is a thing, apparently an international thing. We decided to watch the Santa extravaganza for a little while and then we were off.
Santa's in the metro?
That's a lot of Santa's
wow.
We headed back to the crown bridge where we were the night before and then kept going on to the island of museums where we were insight of a very closed amusement park. From there we could see the ferries and so we decided that they didn't seem that far so we should walk to where they were and check the prices, see if we could get a better deal than what we could find online. Plus, we would have to walk through old town to get there, so it was a pretty perfect route.
Stockholm is a city of a bunch of islands. In order to get to old town we needed to walk back over the crown bridge to the center city, then cross another bridge to get to old town. As we were walking over the crown bridge we saw that the Santa's were on the water as well, in boats and jet skies and canoes, it was craziness. This was all part of the Saint Lucia Festivals that prior to the switching of Calendars used to be a celebration that coincided with the winter solstice.
Santa's on the sea!
Anyhow, as we got to the other side of the bridge we noticed that there was quite a commotion going on near the doc. We stood and watched for a minute then we walked over the bridge to old town through a crowd of Santa's and into the tiny streets.
The wind was howling and the snow drifts that were hitting us in the face were a bit unpleasant, not to mention that I couldn't feel the space between my knees (where my boots stopped) and the upper part of my thighs (where my dress started). Let's just say that a dress in the wind not such a great fashion choice or idea if you don't want to get frostbite...oh well. Anyway we stopped into a coffee shop to warm up a bit; had a really good cup of coffee while looking through our pictures, enjoyed the coziness of the cafe. Once we finished our coffee and we a bit warmer, we were off roaming the streets again. We ran into a bunch of different Christmas markets in old town, tried the local bratwurst and gloggi (like spiced wine but different had almonds and raisins in it).
Cafe stop in Old
Kris look at those Toblerone bars!!!
We walked and walked and Igor directed us this way and that with his smart phone and google maps. We eventually made it to the ferry station where Igor started to chat with the guy at the window. We joked with the guy for awhile and then he told us about this card that would give us a discount on the over night ferry we were about to book to Helsinki for the next afternoon. So we signed up got a super great price for our tickets (40 euro less than what we would have otherwise paid!!) and then we were back off to walk through the city some more, happy, warmer, and a little richer than we would have been!
Sky bridge
View from Sky Bridge
We found when we first got off the plane that the travel adapter that I had given Igor to bring (his old one from 6+ years ago) didn't work, of course because I gave it to him it didn't work. I guess I should have checked it, but, oh well. Anyway, we walked back to the city center, stopping off at this cool bridge that we had seen earlier in the day, more like a sky bridge where you could see the whole city and then went down into the main shopping area in search of 3 things. 1. a travel adapter, 2. thicker tights for me, 3. a small straightening iron for my hair.
Believe it or not we found all three!! Now let's not linger on the fact that Igor forgot the travel adapter the two days later when we left the ferry or that the straightening iron was soo crap that I actually left it in the airbnb, on purpose, a few nights later. I love the tights though. I have worn them every day since. So really it was a win. :)
We got back to Avinash's place around 6 and then he made us a traditional Indian dinner. We even ate it in the Indian style (hands only). Igor loved it so much he decided that we should dedicate at least one night a week to eating with our hands lol. So Kris bring Elijah and Lucas over sometime to have some animal style dinners with aunty Katie and uncle Igor. We stayed up way too late talking with Avinash considering that we had to get up at 7 am the next morning so that Avinash could go to work, but it was fun all the same.
In the morning Igor made Avinash Igor's famous omelet and I had some eggs and left overs from the night before (because the stuff I had bought was super yummy). We had to run out of the house because we spent too much time chatting and enjoying our breakfast and Avinash ended up running late getting to work.
The rest of the day Igor and I spent travelling around to the different metro stations in Stockholm each of which has a different theme and artwork. On one of the metro trains we found Igor doppelgänger. Igor has a picture. I will ask him to share it. Then we finally walked off in the direction of the Ferry and boarded up, found our cabin (remember it was an overnight ferry), located the on board sauna that we would visit later in the evening, made it to the back deck and watch as the boat pushed off into the bay to weave its way through the Sweden archipelago towards Helsinki.
P.S. in Sweden the store set up free gift wrapping areas for you to wrap your Christmas gifts (free paper and ribbons and all!).
So this year we decided to forgo the layovers and take a direct flight. I say we decided but really we got a cheap flight straight from Oakland, CA to Stockholm, Sweden so there really wasn't much choice in it. But that said we decide to make a repeat performance of our travels last year this time doing Scandinavia via plane, train, bus, ferry, car and foot to get to Belarus and back.
Our first stop for obvious reasons was Stockholm. Igor did a lot of the leg work finding us a nice couchsurfing place to stay and sorting out how to get to town from the airport.
We arrived in the afternoon and headed straight to the bathroom at the airport to put on our extra layers. We set up in the cafe in the airport greeting area, double checked with out host and putting a little extra juice into our gadgets that had been draining on the 10.5 hour flight. Then we were off.
One foot outside the airport doors told us we were definitely not in California any more. There was some (not a lot) of snow on the ground, a crispness to the air and drifts of snow flakes falling from the sky. Then we hopped on a bus and went straight to the center of downtown Stockholm where our host was to meet us.
We walked out of the bus into the snowy streets of a bustling city center, walked a bit and then found a coffee shop to plop down in grab a coffee and set up a meeting point with our host.
Mind you we are well into the Northern part of the Northern Hemisphere, which means that even though we arrived in Stockholm around 12 noon by the time we got to the coffee shop (about 1ish) and waited for our host for a bit, the sun (what little we could see of it) was already on is way down for the night. The coffee shop was nice, warm and filled with people (it being Saturday and all). They had what I would say is the best coffee we have had so far on our trip and nice big cups (not like the cups from Friends but normal, nicely sized big cups).
We met our host Avinash at around 2:30. He brought with him two other couchsurfers who were from the Ukraine that he had met up with earlier in the day to show around Stockholm. The girls wanted to see this particular bridge in Stockholm that separates the main city from the museum island and has two golden crowns on it. It was just about dark by the time that we got there but we stopped anyway and took some photos there of the city lights and the crowns of course. we left the girls here as they wanted to go walk around the city more before their flight and Igor and I were quite tired and ready to just sit back and relax for the rest of the evening.
We made it back to Avinash's place around 4:30 talked for quite a bit. We had stopped by the store and picked up some food on the way back. Igor cooked us dinner that night and we briefly talked to Avinash about our plans for the next day and invited him if he liked to come and walk with us, but he declined. We made it until about 10 pm and then Igor and I crashed, unfortunately not for long. We both woke up around 4 am and had a hard time going back to sleep despite being quite tired.
And that folks is how we spent our first day in Stockholm.
Oh yeah and everyone lives in America now. This picture was taken on the street corner of where the cafe we went into was, surprisingly or maybe not so surprisingly it was NOT a starbucks. If you look close you can see a Burger King, 7 Eleven, Subway and a Dunkin Doughnuts. (yikes).
After we watched her eat, the keeper took us to see Igor's other favorite reptile the skink. This big guy is an especially good climber (shocker why Igor liked him). He was all over the place, on the fake rock walls of his terrarium, literally hanging on just by his finger nails. Then the keeper took him out of his cage and he was off, climbing all over her and the walls and then she let me hold him!!! Igor didn't want to. It was one of the coolest things ever. The skink climber all over my arm and then headed for my hair. The keeper pulled him off me just as he was trying to get to my head. The pictures aren't great because he moved fast and a lot but I think we got a couple of good ones in there.
