Everything starts the 7th of March of 2009 when we first met in Bilbao’s airport to start our trip to Finland. We took the first flight from Bilbao to Frankfurt were we had to take another plane in 2 hour time in order to get to Helsinki. You should be careful if you are going to Frankfurt’s airport, because is so big that you can get easily lost, but fortunately we get the right way and we arrive to our gate in time.

In case that you are staying in Helsinki for 1 or 2 nights as we have you have 2 options, the first one is to take a hotel in the centre of Helsinki and get there as soon as you arrive with all your things and like that you already are in the centre in order to see the city, or you can also stay in a hotel near the airport where you have a free bus every 20 minutes from it which takes you to the door of the hotel and maybe go next morning to see the city. We choose the second option and we think that was good, we were in the Cumulus Airport Hotel who has a pool, sauna and a buffet breakfast which was quite good. Also if you are coming in a weekend you can be interested in going to have a beer around here. If you ask in the hotel reception, they will give you a VIP card to go to Flamingos disco were you have not to wait, you have free entrance and you can enjoy a lot either with direct music, in the disco or in the karaoke. It’s also important to know that you can’t enter with your coat so you have to pay the wardrobe 2€ and then is also important to know that a beer is about 5,5€, so be careful about what you ask.

An advice for those of you that are interested in coming to Finland, you should look if you have change the hour of the alarm, if not you can be without breakfast!! As happens to us the first day, so we took the bus (4€) and get to the centre of Helsinki. We also must say that you shouldn’t be worry about asking people about anything, most people speaks English and they are very happy of helping you in what they can. Once in the centre, we took the tramp to see around little bit, because you can get with the same bus ticket any bus or tramp in the period of 1 hour, so don’t throw it away!!!

Helsinki isn’t a very big city for sight seen. You can see it in a morning just walking around. The most beautiful places to be visited are the train station and its surroundings were the national theatre and museum is, the Cathedral (which is the highest building in the city), the Orthodox Church and the harbor and its surroundings.

For having lunch you can go to one of the many restaurants of the city or you can also save some money by buying the lunch in the supermarket, where you can get hot food as lasagna and chicken for around 6€.

After a bit of more sight seen we get to the hotel and after relaxing a bit, we went to have some dinner. We arrived around 21:15 and everything was closed so we had to walk back to the hotel and we eat some things we had bought from home. It’s important also to know that they usually have dinner around 4 or 5 o’clock and that the restaurants close at 21:00.