15.06.2011 – 15.06.2011  14 °C

Today has really been the travelling day! I left St Pb just before lunch time and arrived in Helsinki 30min later.. Yep just a 30min flight (with three hours of hanging around at both ends!) I did a stupid thing and left my knife in my back pack (from my last train trip) and so had to give it up at the airport.. DAMN

At the other end in Helsinki I went through the slowest immigration line in the history of lines.. I was waiting well over an hour to go through immigration. The Finns decided (in their wisdom) to only have two officers on duty for a whole jumbo’s worth of tourists! Oh well.. Eventually got through and made my way to downtown.

I’m staying at the Hostel Academica which is about 0.5km from the centre of Helsinki.. Not that far that you can’t walk everywhere. The hostel is something out of an Ikea catalogue! Everywhere you look is some sort of flat packed stuff that you would see if your typical store.. Just hilarious!

I spent the afternoon just walking around Helsinki trying to get my bearings! Luckily for me I was able to find a supermarket so i’ve been able to stock up. The city is built on the gulf of Finland and therefore the city is just filled with seagulls and other water birds. The city is a strange mixture of some oldish buildings and really new futuristic buildings.. You can really tell you are in Scandanavia!

I’m going to spend some time tomorrow checking out the Finnish National Museum and move to my other hotel (which is down on the waterfront so should have a nice view)