Finland – Smtfhw's Travels

Food 2020 – Recipes (Scones, Cheese Scones, Canelés, Lemon Drizzle Cake With Edible Flowers, Runebergintorttu)

May 2020 – Recipes (Scones, Cheese Scones, Canelés, Lemon Drizzle Cake With Edible Flowers, Runebergintorttu) I should probably call this the Great Lockdown Bakeoff (or something). I’m sure it’s a pretty common theme (certainly it would seem to be if you look at how damn hard it has been to lay hands on flour, yeast,…

Travel 2018 – Helsinki, Day 5

Monday, 3rd December 2018 – Helsinki On our last day, having been running already on the trip, I woke up early and decided that I was going to try out the new-ish (well, it was still under construction when we first visited) Allas Sea Pool complex down on the harbour side. I didn’t think I’d…

Food 2018 – Gaijin, Helsinki

Sunday, 2nd December 2018 – Gaijin, Helsinki Sunday night in Helsinki (and even more so in the rest of Finland in our experience) is a tricky one. Because staff are paid a hefty premium for working on a Sunday, open restaurants are hard to find, if not almost impossible as we discovered in Hämeenlinna in…

Travel 2018 – Helsinki, Day 4

Sunday, December 2nd 2018 – Helsinki, Day 4 Sunday we were back under cloudy skies, with the threat of snow, so we decided we’d do the Panorama Bus Tour (again included on the Helsinki Card) starting at 11:00, then grab some lunch at the Christmas Market because we’d not managed to have a Finnish sausage…

Food 2018 – Emo, Helsinki

Saturday, 1st December 2018 – Emo, Helsinki Once again we put ourselves in the hands of the guides, with the White Guide describing Gastrobar EMO as somewhere that “has a toned-down, Japanesy feel to it with vertical textile screens that do very little to stop your neighbours from hearing or seeing what you’re up to……

Travel 2018 – Helsinki, Day 3

Saturday, December 1st 2018 – Helsinki, Day 3 And so on Day 3 we knew we had several Christmas-related things to do, so after running Tokoinranta parkrun, and coffee and cake for breakfast for me, we headed down the Esplanadi again with intent to go over to Suomenlinna, where I’d been told there would be…

Fitness/Travel 2018 – Tokoinranta parkrun, Helsinki

Saturday, December 1st 2018 – Tokoinranta parkrun, Helsinki Unlike some people I’m not an obsessive parkrun tourist, which means I don’t find a parkrun first before deciding where to go on holiday. Rather, if there is a local parkrun and I’m in the area and can fit it in, then I will. Which is how…

Food 2018 – Ask, Helsinki

Friday, 30th December 2018 – Ask, Helsinki The White Guide says “Dazzling Finnish poetry – In the sparsely decorated room, with benches along the walls and Ilmari Tapiovaara’s simple wooden chairs, nothing here betrays that we are about to be treated to a spectacular show in roughly fifteen acts. Chef Filip Langhoff surely learned a…

Travel 2018 – Helsinki, Day 2

Friday, 30th November 2018 – Helsinki, Day 2 Friday started slowly, and we spent some time enjoying breakfast in the hotel (I’m told it’s been voted Finland’s best breakfast and though I can’t verify that, it is a very good breakfast indeed and is improved further by being included in the room rate, as is…

Food 2018 – Natura, Helsinki

Thursday, 29th November 2018 – Natura, Helsinki On our first night in town I’d booked for dinner about as close to the hotel as I could get, based on recommendations from both Michelin and the White Guide. For our first dinner I’d gone for Natura, which surprisingly isn’t in the White Guide, but that is…