Helsinki

jaggeh

I recently returned from a 2 week trip to finland/sweden. i have to say helsinki was fantastic. I had a lot of doomsday advice from people warning me of the prices over there but in reality for holidaying it worked out cheaper than dublin.

Didnt break the bank on accomodation, stayed in the eurohostel which was clean and fairly swank for a hostel. good security on rooms and a free buffet breakfast every day

Going out was great, the first night there we went to Molly Malones, its near the train station easy to find. very friendly crowd, decent live music every night and the drinks were about 4.50 each

The second night we went to the helsinki club, being sunday it was dead, seemed like a nice place tho. we met some finnish lads who showed us a decent bar called lost & found in the kamppi area. ended up sitting with a group of fins in a park on the other side of town from where we were staying, by and large a nice people.

monday and tuesday is fairly dead in helsinki so we hit a meatrack club by the trainstation. 35 minute queue to get in and they ID all men, women rarely have to queue and dont get id'ed unless they are blatantly underage. Ratio of women to men was about 5:1.

Wednesday is 'little saturday' everywhere is open till 5am and theres lots of people about. Check out Onnela in the Kamppi area.

Thursday was a bit of a rest day, i went out to suomenlinna fortress and had a walk around, pretty nice place. if you are with family there is a beach here and lots of nice picnic spots.

Friday and saturday we went to Hanko in the south of finland for midsummer. got outrageously drunk, met a lot more fins who kept plying us with alcohol for free, slept on the steps of the train station then went back to helsinki to sleep some more.

during the whole week there was no rain 20-27 degree heat and about 20-22 hours of sunlight. in all the two weeks plus insurance cost 870 euro each and i planned and purchased each part outside a travel agents.

same holiday from agent - 1200 euro. pays to shop around people

I highly reccomend finland as a summer holiday place :cool:

Mountjoy Mugger

Nice informatve post, thanks. Any tips as to the web sites you used?

jaggeh

for flights i went to scandinavian airlines SAS, when i checked thier prices for a flight to helsinki they told me to go to their partners website blue1 where i got the flight for 50 euro cheaper. SAS were cheaper from helsinki to stockholm and stockholm to dublin was blue1 again. both part of the star alliance.

for helsinki i booked the eurohostel from hotels.com
for stockholm i got a real deal on a 4star hotel called Birger Jarl, from gtahotels.com

for my insurance i went to abbey travel on abbey street and got the blue inurance single trip full cover for 34 euro.

jaggeh

oh yeah a few more tips

dont use the taxi's in finland, they are extortionate. there is an airport bus to get to and from the airport and the whole city has decent tram and bus cover. you can get a 4 day pass for about 50 euro that gives you access to all public transport (including the ferries to the various islands) and several other bonus's like free entry to museums and i think i saw mention of a free gift somewhere.