A deep sleep, woken by the 7am alarm, and a wet, soggy Helsinki port, shrouded in mist – the first bad weather of the cruise, so we can't really complain.
The ship berthed on the starboard side.
Walk off with no passport or ID shown or on return.
This is part of the EEC, so Euro is the accepted currency.
There were HoHo buses just out of the secure area.
There was an option for a paid shuttle to town at probably €6 one way, to the city harbour.
We were booked on a land/sea tour and in retrospect, possibly not the best choice, given the weather conditions, but obviously, we didn't know what the weather would be, two months ago when we booked.
Our guide was Kaisa (I think that is how it is spelled) and she was informative, but possibly a little too much so. Non-stop throughout the whole coach tour and also the boat. I think we started at about 10am and we returned to the ship about 2pm, so it was virtually a 4 hour non-stop talk, with about 30 minutes of respite.
Trying to look through wet windows was bad enough on the coach, but at least the air-conditioning stopped them misting. We'd done the HoHo previously so spent part of the time in heavy traffic, using the coach's free Wi-Fi to download Facebook onto Paula's phone and post a comment or two. According to Kaisa, the traffic planners were all probably cyclists, so we stopped at every set of traffic lights. I think they must have been trained by Auckland Transport or vice-versa.
A photo stop at the Sibelius sculpture for ten minutes, and an endless stream of Japanese tourists posing for selfies and photographs in front of the sculpture, taking forever. Not very considerate when there were about 5 coachloads and everyone on a limited time frame. It's a snapshot for goodness sake, not a photoshoot!
We eventually made it to the inner harbour area and the guide walked us off the coach, straight through the covered market and out the other side. This was one of those brilliant small markets where every stall looked attractive and it would have been nice to have done it in our own time and enjoyed a coffee and a bite. Several cruisers obviously did.
As there was a queue for the loos, we followed the guide's advice as we had 20 minutes to spare before boarding the boat, so we crossed the road to the city hall and used their facilities. Within the main hall, they even had a dish of free sweets. It wouldn't surprise me if several cruisers didn't have their handbags stuffed.
Paula was peckish and we found a small stall on the edge of the open market where we bought jam doughnuts. The young Finnish girl who served us spoke such perfect English, I honestly thought she was English. Apparently she has an Australian boyfriend, who is due to arrive in 16 days' time. The doughnuts were fresh and delicious. A good buy.
We boarded the wooden boat for our harbour cruise, but without air-conditioning, the damp and hot bodies inside soon steamed up the windows, so added to the mist outside and the fact we couldn't escape the non-stop oration, not the best of harbour cruises. Had it been dry, we could have sat outside and for the last 15 minutes, I, along with two other guys, braved the elements and stood out on deck. Paula was charged €2.50 for a mediocre paper cup of tea, which seemed a bit pricey. In fact, quite a lot of the Helsinki prices were a bit steep, even on the dock, so if you want a juniper pot-stand, wooden butter knife or similar, buy it in Tallinn.
I think the cost of a walk up harbour cruise was about €20, so our advice would be to do the HoHo bus, or even just the shuttle to town, to be able to spend more time on your own, do the harbour cruise if the weather is fine, and enjoy the covered and also the outdoor markets, which we know are well worth it. To be fair to our guide, we were given the option of staying in town and catching the shuttle back. Maybe if it had been dry, we would have done just that.
Helsinki is still one of my favourite ports of anywhere we have been, but you have to have time to enjoy it and for first timers, this Princess tour was at least an hour too short.
Back at the dockside, although the souvenir shop was crowded, I doubt there were many bargains to be had. Then we had to stand out in the rain to queue to get back on board, as more coaches returned. They had two gangways open, but even though there were two on-board scanners at ours, only one was being manned, so some would have got quite wet queuing. Not such a good system.
Rather than the International café, we went to the Horizon Court buffet. The fresh salmon was delicious, with spinach, and we couldn't resist a pot sticker each. (If you don't know what one of those is, either you haven't cruised with Princess before or aren't too familiar with Asian cuisine). A bowl of hot carrot soup was also most enjoyable.
An afternoon spent catching up with the blog before trivia at 4:25pm. A 16/20 wasn't a winning score and we have some doubt about the number of chromosomes of an adult female… We aren't wasting our internet minutes to research it further at this stage either.
An hour out of Helsinki, the sun reappeared…
The second formal night and another good meal. The crawfish vol-au-vent went down well, even though the unshelled one as a garnish was best left that way. The chateaubriand beef was melt in the mouth tender. We nattered away with Alan and Sheila until after 10:15pm, with the sun still streaming in through the window and we only packed up then, so that Stanford and Soccoro, our waiters, could finish off.
We only have one more port now before Southampton, but a day at sea first, where we know that the inside of the ship will be fairly busy as the forecast is for just 12 degrees Celsius. That is an Auckland winter temperature and we are on a summer cruise?
No comments:
Post a Comment