by Shelsonline

A Day of Exploring Helsinki City Centre

Helsinki is a beautiful city to explore on food with it’s easily accessible attractions, and friends of mine plotted the perfect route to show us around in one day.

Helsinki winter garden

The Helsinki Winter Garden is open all year round, founded in 1893, it has a colourful rose garden in the height of summer, daffodils and tulips in spring, and festive lights at Christmas. Inside the greenhouse there is an impressive number of heat-loving plants including cacti and tropical plants. There are benches and chairs scattered throughout the inside of the greenhouse and outside where you can sit and enjoy the garden.

Hugo – Miniature Hydropower Plant

The Hugo watermill highlights the benefits of hydroelectric power as a renewable energy source. It generates power using the stream to charge small electric devices like phones via a USB. If you use it, just bring along a charge cable to use. Besides being useful, it’s in a beautiful area to enjoy the scenery.

walking along the helsinki streets

Not actually a destination stop to discuss about this one, more to remark about how nice it was to walk through the city center and see the typical Finnish style buildings. They had alternating colours, 6 stories high were common with shop fronts or offices at the bottom stories with apartments at the top.

church in the rock/ Temppeliaukio Church

The Rock Church is a Lutheran church opened in 1969 carved into solid rock. Another eye catching and unique feature of the church is that the dome is made of copper, and the circular skylight around the dome allows natural light in. I enjoyed sitting in the church and admiring the rock walls, circular building shape and beautiful roof. There are also services you can attend, and concerts from time to time.

toivo kuulan puisto

This park was great, it was nice to be able to see the sea in Helsinki, the water was so still with all the islands protecting the area from waves. There was a harbour and a small beach I visited.

cafe regatta

Just further up from the park was a popular café with outdoor seating. We enjoyed meat pies and Finnish desserts while enjoying the warmth of summer and a rest from walking.

Sibelius monument

Situated in a beautiful park is the Sibelius Monument created in 1967 to honour Jean Sibelius, Finland’s famous composer. The monument consists of more than 600 steel pipes constructed together into a shape resembling an organ. The monument is a work of art showing a great combination of abstract art and celebration from the musical composer after who it is named. Since this is a very popular tourist attraction, I did wait about 15 minutes for a clear shot before the crowds had moved along.

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