The easiest way to travel from Stockholm to Helsinki is by overnight ferry. There are at least two ferries daily crossing and they are as big as some cruise ships and have shops, casinos and entertainment on board. There are thousands of small islands on Baltic seas and many of them are private with homes on them.
One of the most popular tourist attractions at Helsinki is a trip to Estonia Tallinn. Two hour ferry across the Gulf of Finland get you to the Capital of Estonia. The Old Town is one of the best-preserved medieval cities in Europe. Now with all the high tech and IT companies it is one of the top-10 digital cities in the world. We spent a glorious day walking around and enjoy the local festival at the market square.
Helsinki is the capital of Finland and famous for its sustainable urban environment design. We took a nice walk along its waterfront trail, enjoying the scenery, wildlife even did a little exercise on the gym equipments We ended up at the Kaisaniemi Botanic Garden. Its conservatory the ‘Winter Garden’ was established on 1895 has extensive collection of plants. The outdoor garden is free and also has a grand building that hosts one of the world largest ligand research center. This garden is definitely worth a visit.
We stayed at an apartment/hotel near the Old Center of Helsinki. It was walkable to many attractions. One nice experience on our Scandinavia trip was the public transportation. In Poland, seniors like us rode all systems free of charge. Just walk on and walk off. In Copenhagen (rejsekort) and Stockholm (SL), we used their respective apps, which linked to a credit card for payment. I had the most trouble with the Helsinki app (HSL). I couldn’t activate the app since the validation code was sent to my phone, but it never showed up. After long conversations with an HSL agent, I still couldn’t get it to work until one of the drivers told us we really didn’t need the app; just tap with our card directly. That was much easier. Traveling in Scandinavia, learning how to use the public transportation is a must, since these countries have comprehensive system of trains, ferries, buses, and trams Google Maps, as well as Google Translate, were two very useful apps on this trip.
My friend recommended 3Pulse for a more accurate count of all the countries I have visited over the years. I am glad to have achieved my lifelong goal of visiting 7 continents and 100 countries. Now that any new countries would be the icing on the cake. I am sure there are more cities and sights that I have miss counting over the years. When I have time to revisit my old journals, I plan to update the map then. For a girl from Taiwan whose first international trip was to the USA for graduate school, I have come a long way.