Helsinki, Finland: Part/Week 1
Posted on April 8, 2024 • 9 minutes • 1857 words
We woke up very happy to be in Helsinki for many reasons. Partially because I had been here 13 years before and LOVED it and partially because we were going to be here for 2 months and looking forward to not packing up or getting on a plane for a while. It is a place I have been wanting to come back to for so long and have been looking forward to this time here so much!
We slept in a bit, due to the time change and the very late night, but when we were finally up, it already looked like mid day outside. Sunrise was at 6:20am and we were rolling out of bed at almost 9am. View from our semi enclosed patio. The water is out there, just hidden in the clouds.
Being able to check it all out a bit more, we found the apartment to be perfect for us. A nice living area with a big couch, lots of floor space, a yoga mat!, 2 big enough beds in the kids’ room so no one had to sleep on the floor, so much storage that we could fully unpack, stocked kitchen, 2.5 bathrooms and a sauna. We were in heaven and in this place for over a month.
I was serious mission to get us all second-hand bikes. The goal was by the weekend, knowing that the longer it took, the less time we’d have to ride them. Tuesday, our first full day there, Dan and Sam walked just a few blocks away to check out a bike after work. Success!
Wednesday, Dan went with Max and that one worked out too!
AND Friday the bike Dan and Ben went to look at worked out as well.
I was SO proud of this! 3 bikes and a helmet (Ben’s came with one) for 200 euros. Saturday we got 2 more helmets and we were ready!
Feeling zero rush since we have 2 months here, our first week there was just checking out the neighborhood, doing school work and finding bikes. We found a great park close by that had a spinning thing that was rotated on an asymmetric axis and was so fun. Kids would run, hold on and go flying in the air when they got to the top part.
And a head causality.
The weather was pretty nice, meaning I didn’t freeze hanging out at the park for a couple hours. The patio at our place is sort of a sunroom and heats up nicely.
For Ben and Max’s bikes, theirs were about a 45 minute walk in different directions. Dan was sending photos back of things we needed to check out and of Max being adorable.
Still short a bike and helmets, we did a lot of walks that first week. Seemed to find water no matter the direction you walked in.
After a week of vacation, and LOTS of eating out, I embraced being home and cooking a bit. Our first night there, we had a delicious Turkish meal…sort of our new go to meal these days. Easy to make, easy to find the ingredients and everyone loves it.
Another go to meal that the kids love…soup with meatballs. Really any soup works and add meatballs. As Max would say ’easy peezy, lemon squeezy'.
Game of the night? Can you guess the food on Sam’s face?
One of the things I loved about Helsinki from when I was here before was the Kauppahalli (town market) where you could buy a lots of local foods with SO much variety AND amazing salmon to eat raw. Pepper, my cousin, and I ate so much. We would by salmon, an avocado, a cucumber and a mango and go to town. On our 2nd day there, the kids and I walked over to check it out. It was lunch time, so we started with salmon toast. Max just wanted cooked salmon, no toast, and the kept telling the lady ‘bigger, bigger, bigger’ as she was trying to cut him a piece. Then I got 400 grams (about a pound) of salmon to make sushi for dinner. That’s enough, right?
There was fish stall after fish stall after fish stall. Ben was in heaven!
We then headed outside to where I remembered Pepper getting these little fried fish and being attacked by seagulls trying to eat them. Attached so badly, you couldn’t eat so we had to go to cover. Pepper, shown eating in the safety of a cover with plastic sides.
Yup, seagulls still there and still hungry! Sam got hit by a wing as one flew trying to get his fish that he was trying to cover. We then decided to head to the covered eating area for safety.
Not sure how much fish is actually in there, but they were a massive hit along with the calamari.
We walked home and kids found some of the last snow to play in. We slowly watched this pile melt over 4 days.
Armed with salmon, rice, avocado, soy sauce, seaweed, mango and cucumber, Ben and Sam really wanted to make the sushi themselves and play restaurant. We found out why they paid Max off (yes, offered him money to NOT cook) when we got the menu. There was a kids meal where you could make your own sushi! We were all kicked out to the patio, which was not as warm as lunch time to order and have our drinks.
It seemed the kitchen staff as so focused on the kid’s meal, that us adults were not getting food anytime soon. To be fair, at real restaurants, we always say ‘bring out the kids stuff first and whenever it’s ready’.
Drinks were also a hit.
Ben was a sushi making machine, but just a bit slow. BUT for his first time with this technique, it was amazing!
We found out that 400 grams was no where close enough to what we needed, so Dan and I supplemented our meals after dinner.
Dan took the kids on a walk one day so I could get a lot of work done. A bit different from the water in Portugal a week ago!
Didn’t stop the kids from digging in the freezing sand.
And is it even a walk if you don’t find something to climb?
And toys to play with! The whole area is about a 15 minute walk from our place…and when we all have bikes, even closer!
By Saturday morning, all the kids had bikes, Dan has his folding one but I still didn’t. I knew I was the least important as Max was going to need some help still, with not being on a bike for 9 months and not fully loving it before we left. I found one to check out, but it was 6 miles away. I used it as a good excuse to get a run in. Started out quite cold, but I warmed up quickly.
And if you were wondering how to say garlic-door in Finnitaliano…
I ran about 4.5 miles and then found an adorable coffee shop, where I really felt I needed to stop. Walked the rest of the way there, which helped my timing as I had given myself a big buffer. Bike ended up being too small, but opted for the tram on the way back. I told the kids about the run and bike over lunch. Mini sandwiches I made when I got home and coleslaw Dan had made…due to the fact he bought a giant cabbage that was not going to eat itself.
Kids were bummed the bike didn’t work out and were worried how our ‘family bike ride’ would work. I explained that I would run, since Max needed help still. We bought helmets and set off for the park. To my surprise, Max did amazing! He wasn’t trying to pedal backwards at all and just took off. Balance was never an issue as he loved his balance bike. The bike is about an inch too tall, so starting it without a curb was hard, so we did lots of push starts for him. Our backs were saved due to the bar/handle.
Ben and Sam were pros and SO happy. I can’t express the happiness experienced by our whole family during this hour. I knew we had all been missing biking for the last 9 months and I now realized how much we had been missing them.
Dan and I worked with Max while the other two went back and forth on the bike path. Max had had enough falls…with the bike being a little too tall, the only way to get off was to stop and then sort of fall off. Happily we rode back from the park and up the ramp on the stairs from the bike path. Yes you have to go down (there are riding ramps too), but once you are down there…no cars and no intersections! It seems like it was an old rail line, converted to a bike/walk path.
To wrap up the weekend on Sunday, Dan took the two older boys on a BIG bike ride while Max and I went on a bike/run together. His control of the bike is great, just still the starting and stopping. We went to a lake and found a good playground to come back to.
He did awesome and we rewarded ourselves with a latte and a babyccino.
Max made sure he got every last drop.
Photos from the rest of the family’s bike ride.
Lazy rest of the day with reading, kids playing inside and baking some banana bread. It was the only pan I had, so I made a double batch to fill it up.
Dan had fun grocery shopping and finding some of his favorite Nordic foods. I swear when we were in Sweden 8 years ago, the first thing he did was go buy a lot of random fish or caviar things to taste. Good thing he had our friend Nick had been with us, who was open to eating all these things too. This time Dan had to get the kids to eat it with him.
Ben loved the pickled herring and they all tried the cream/fish eggs in a tube (insert vomit emoji here), but said it was just okay. Max was more honest. After dinner, Ben did another reading as he had finished another book. Entrance tickets were passed out and blankets were provided if it was a bit cold. Very Scandinavian of them! Yes, another thing to love about Helsinki as most restaurants (if not all!) have blankets for sitting outside, if it’s a bit cold.
Sam took his typical seat next to the author and smiled every time he knew what was about to happen.
To wrap up our first week, it couldn’t have been better! We have bikes, we love our neighborhood, we know where to get amazing salmon, bike paths everywhere, water everywhere, our place is perfect and people have been so nice to us. It feels so good to be back in this city!