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Ok eating out is very expensive, but there is cheaper food at the market square as well as the old market, where a piece of cooked salmon is €5 or a bowl of salmon soup is €6 (yes there’s a lot of salmon!). But the harbour reminds me of Hobart, and the cafes and buildings remind me of Paris, so it’s a pretty good combination! The population of Helsinki itself is less than half a million, but it is the city for two nearby towns as week, Espoo and Vantaa, so it’s actually bigger than a city of half a million. Combined with these two other villages the population is about a million. The city has bike lanes, footpaths, buses, trains, trams and an underground metro train system, so the infrastructure is well developed. Also, there are loads of small sized caches! That’s right folks, they’ve got plenty of room for TBs here :) In all I found 9 caches on my trip here, including an awesome earthcache which was of fossils embedded into floor tiles, excellent.

Last night I ate an early dinner at Havis on their terrace. My colleague in the Helsinki office recommended this restaurant for the fish. I had scallops with cauliflower purée and Parma ham followed by strawberries, vanilla ice cream and cinnamon cake.

Tonight I am back at the same Finnish restaurant my workmates took me to at lunch. At lunchtime I had the reindeer and mashed tatties, this evening I will try the lohikeitto, the creamy salmon soup I’ve been wanting to try since I read about it on wikipedia.

Breakfast was picked herrings, smoked mackerel, eggs and yummy dark grainy rye bread. Oh and it’s not all about food! The homeware brands they have here rock! Iittala, Arabia, Marimekko, and Aarrika. Marimekko is probably my fav, they have fabric designs to buy by the metre as well. And the cartoon characters Moomin are really cute and funny. Ok so I’m a little bit in love with this city and Finnish design!

Oh yeah that soup was tasty! And the bread they give is divine! If bread can be divine. They had the wine recommendations on the menu too so I had to take their advice. That leads me to now, when I’m sipping the Austrian  white that I can’t remember the name of, while I wait for my dessert (soft meringue with rhubarb cider sorbet) and the Finnish berry wine. Glass of, mind you ;)

The menu’s wine recommendations were tops last night as well. The Asti they recommended with my strawberries, ice-cream and cinnamon bread was worth taking a photo of the label! Wes and I cycled through that region last year on our Italian push bike holiday, so I had to try it :)

Needless to say, my work daily food allowance is not even enough to cover my two evening meals, but it’s been worth it. Like a mini holiday/work sandwich at almost no cost to me. Except for the presents I had to buy Wes – I only wish he was here too.

I just remembered another reason why I think I was meant to be Finnish. The government have implemented a recycling incentive scheme. Every time you buy a product which is sold in a recyclable packaging, you pay extra for it (20c for small plastic bottle, 15c for can, 10c for glass bottle, 40c for large plastic bottles). Let’s call that the packaging supplement. For example I bought a 500ml plastic bottle of water from the supermarket that costs €1.29, but i had to pay €1.49 for it. Then if you take the empty container back to the supermarket and insert it into a machine, it spits out a voucher of exactly the same amount as you paid for the supplement that you can use on your next purchase. Unfortunately the hotel cleaners nicked my empty bottle before I understood the concept so I’ll never get back my 20c! Take that britain, land of landfill gobblers (out of 16 flats, we are the only ones who recycle). Now it’s time for dessert.

Ok the Finnish berry wine was a mistake, not sweet enough. I should’ve stuck with the recommendation, which coincidentally was the same Asti I loved from last night’s restaurant. The soft meringue was lovely, the rhubarb sorbet and diced fresh strawberries good company for it, but the rhubarb and cider soup was unnecessary, having the texture of babyfood. Ew. Don’t worry I still ate most of it.

Back at the hotel now (which also has recycling bins in the rooms – go Scandic!), and I’m ready for bed. Only two downsides for me so far: most cache locations smell like pee; and at the end of the day my face is covered in London-style soot particles. Two small offsets for all those positives don’t you think! That and apparently some Russian bears have migrated into mid-Finland.

Holy crap a double espresso with a bit of warm milk costs €3.20!! I should’ve just popped into the office where they have an espresso machine. Goodness gracious me. I remember drinking single espresso in Portugal for 70c.

Another good thing is the language isn’t nearly as difficult to pronounce as it looks. Words are really long, but pretty much pronounced phonetically, give or take a few sounds my mouth just will not make.