It's common in Stockholm to take an overnight ferry trip back and forth between Helsinki Finland, Tallinn Estonia, or Riga Latvia. You can easily travel overnight in a cabin, spend the day in another town, and return back home in your same cabin. The ferries are more like small cruise ships heading to a single destination. They have restaurants, duty free shops, a dance show, a band, and a karaoke bar. Watching late night karaoke of predominately Finnish songs was definitely a new experience. The Silja Symphony ferry to Helsinki is one of the nicer ones with an inside promenade for the shops and restaurants. It was recently remodeled so it was particularly nice for one of these ferries.
One main attraction is the duty free alcohol and cheaper drinks than the normally expensive restaurants and bars in Sweden or Finland. This was the ship's trash on the dock:
Arriving in icy Helsinki:
Here's some pics around Helsinki. We only had 6 hours to explore but it isn't a big city. The skywheel isn't too big either but it was something to do. We also spent some time in an art museum with a Rodin sculpture exhibit (The Thinker, The Kiss, etc.) but unfortunately they didn't allow pictures.
Some of the Swedish archipelago on the way home:
Hey Jeff,
ReplyDeleteJust wanted to say, I really enjoyed this breakdown of your experience. As someone interested in FSS IMS, this was a fascinating way to see the journey play out. Will continue to follow your posts.