Jolene and Zach's Travel Adventures: Scandinavia Day 3 Helsinki walking tour, Arctic circle night train

Day 3 of our trip included a walking tour of Helsinki, a tram tour of some of the further sights in Helsinki, then the start of our night train trip to see santa at the Artic Circle. We were still trying to catch up on sleep so it also involved lots of coffee. The weather was almost perfect with just a little rain on our tram tour. Another good day overall!

Breakfast in our apartment including the great cardamom bread

First stop of the day was a park just around the corner to let Lincoln burn off some energy

Then we came back and packed all our stuff up. We figured out how to get it all transported by ourselves to the tram station and then into the train station

The lovely art deco Helsinki train station

We carted all of our stuff to the basement where we rented two big lockers so we could store of stuff for the day

Next stop (after a pit stop at a Starbucks) was our red umbrella free walking tour. It started in front of the Amanda statue near the market square

We stopped at Senate square first to take in the view of the Helsinki Lutheran Cathedral among other things.

Here is the inside. The outside was actually much more impressive. The inside looked well...like a Lutheran church, nice but not over the top

Across from the Catheral was the former Finnish national library (this is for you mom, look up pictures of the inside since we had too much stuff to go in)

We made a brief stop to try this salt flavored licorice. I guess they like it, but it smelled horrible.

So many beautiful buildings on our tour.

View of the harbor and the Orthodox cathedral in the background

We hiked up some steps to see the Orthodox Cathedral. It was closed that day so we didn't get to see inside

Lovely park on the way down from the Cathedral. This is where the author of the Moomin books hung out when she was little.

Finnish public sauna with pools and spots to just jump in the water. This is even open in the winter when they cut holes in the ice.

Fresh fish at market square where the tour ended

We ate our lunch under a tree right off the square. Lincoln enjoyed playing with the flowers

Up next was the tram tour laid out in Rick Steves. We rode the number 2 and 3 tram and stopped at a few places to see some things

Church of the rock. This is a church dug into the rock during the 1960's. Lincoln loved it because there was a piano player there when we first came in

Next stop was the sibelius monument near the water. It is pretty abstract but cool looking

On the way to the monument we stopped for a coffee/juice break and at another playground where Lincoln enjoyed playing in the sand and going on the seesaw with a local girl

We walked over to the water. It was about this time that it started raining a little so we hurried over to the tram and rode the rest of the way back to the train station

Back at the train station! We stopped to ask a few questions about our ticket to make sure we were ready and then headed out to find a little more food and coffee before our train trip

Coffee House to the rescue! Salad, and cold drinks for everyone

More of the lovely art deco train station

And then we got all the luggage and went to wait on the tracks for about 45 min which turned into more like 1:15 because our train was delayed\

Our train with the first delay listed

Finally at about 7:15 we were on board and ready to go. Here is Lincoln sitting in our cabin. We had a 2 bed cabin with a private shower. It was not really big enough for us and all our luggage but we made it work

Lincoln and I played line up the condiments at the restaurant car while we waited for that to open while Zach moved a few pieces of luggage to a different area for the night

For dinner we had swedish meatballs and pasta. It took forever to get our food so we then we right off to our cabin to try to get Lincoln to bed after everyone showered