First Time to Helsinki

The famous statues outside Helsinki Railway Station

Yesterday morning my host mother, two host brothers, and I woke up early to take a two hour car ride to Helsinki, the capital of Finland.

Ateneum Art Museum (didn't get a chance to get a great picture of it)

The first thing we did in Helsinki was go to the Ateneum Art Museum which had a giant exhibition on the Finnish artist Helen Schjerfbeck. I didn't know of her before coming here but after seeing her work, I definitely started liking her. (I like to paint sometimes too, if you don't know.) There were some really interesting collections of paintings from other artists too. Mostly Finnish Painters were exhibited here like Albert Edelfelt and Akseli Gallen-Kallela just to name some, but there were also a lot of American and Swedish Artists.

Inside the Ateneum

Inside the Ateneum

Next up we walked to Senate Square, the main square in Helsinki. When seeing travel advertisements for Finland, you will most likely see the white cathedral that sits atop Senate Square. It Helsinki's Lutheran Cathedral. To be here was so exciting for me because I had seen pictures of this square so many times and had also seen this on the Travel Channel with Samantha Brown (her show actually got me interested in Finland in the first place).

Helsinki Cathedral

Well well, who is that?

Dude, get out of my picture.

Side of the Ateneum

After Senate Square, we went to a shopping mall because there was a store that my host brothers wanted to go into. We were there about twenty minutes and then we went to "Finland's best Mexican Restaurant"...Taco Bell is more Mexican... don't get me wrong, the food was good here, but not really that Mexican hahaha.

Amarillo Restaurant

These are what the trams in Helsinki look like.

After we had lunch, my host mom and host brothers went back to the store they went into before to buy what they were looking at. My host mom said that I could wait outside on the street if I wanted to. She said it might be more exciting. And it was. I had probably twenty minutes of sitting there next to the Ateneum Museum right near Helsinki Train Station just watching Finnish life go on around me. It made me so happy just to sit there on a concrete stump watching the people of Helsinki swarm around doing what they do daily. (also known as the best people watching EVER)

Helsinki has a pub tram!

On the way home from Helsinki, we stopped in the village Iittala. You guessed it, the Iittala glass company comes from there. Of course I had to go in the outlet store. 

Iittala is at the top of the Finnish Design food chain along with Marimekko (textile company). Iittala is best known for its Alvar Aalto vase, designed by nobody other than one of the greatest known Finnish architects, Alvar Aalto. (Kleinhans Music Hall in Buffalo is designed by Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen by the way.) The shape of the vase is very organic and the inspiration of its form probably comes from the shape of a lake. (Finland has around 190,000 lakes!) I found myself a small Aalto vase on sale for €20.

Alvar Aalto vases

It was an amazing day walking around Finland's capital city. Helsinki definitely is a very cool place to be.