We actually slept really well last night, it was no wonder, yesterday was a long day without much sleep on the airplane from Atlanta.
I heard Stephanie rustling with getting some Tylenol and asked her if she was OK. Of course, it was still dark outside, so we had no idea of the time, at least I did not. It was already 7:20 AM, but I had thought it must be 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning. Her wrist was hurting from pulling the suitcase through the gravel last night on the way to the hotel, and having the weight of her backpack on the top of the suitcase to make it easier to carry.
We knew breakfast started at 7:30 AM, but did not know how long it lasted. We slept about 30 minutes longer, but I was afraid we would sleep too long, sunrise is not until about 9:00 AM, and without some daylight, we might be disoriented, and not get up at a decent time for breakfast, which is included with the room.
I showered and let Stephanie sleep a little longer. I was able to use the QCR code we got at the reception desk last night with our keys to look online about the breakfast times, which for Saturday, were 7:30 AM to 11:00 AM. I tried to make a reservation, which they had suggested, but it stated online that this could only be done up until midnight of the day before, who knew, they did not let us know that small tidbit of helpful information last night at check-in. Reservations were not required, so we knew we could just go when we were ready.
At about 9:20 AM, we headed down to the first floor for breakfast. We thought we needed to use our room key to check in for breakfast, but the lady at the counter, who was helping another person, just started talking to us in what I assume was Finnish. She was Asian, so it sounded really fast, and we had no idea what she was saying. Stephanie said “English Please” and she said we just needed to show her our room key and then we could pass by so we showed it to her. There were several sitting areas around the two main rooms where the breakfast buffet was being served, and we looked around and picked out a table, and set Stephanie’s phone and a small container of hand sanitizer there to save the table while we got our food.
The buffet was quite extensive, almost too much to take in. We settled on items from the “hot food” room, an egg and cheese casserole and some nice-looking fried ham slices. Stephanie also got some fruit and I got a croissant and a Cafe Americano from the automated coffee machine.
We headed back to our “reserved” table, only to find an older couple had sat there even though we had placed our items on the table. Luckily, there were some seats at another table next to that one, and I just grabbed our items and we sat there instead. It did not seem to phase that couple, maybe they just thought there was a single person and since the table was for four, there was plenty of room, who knows.
The breakfast was good and we enjoyed sitting there and I even had a second coffee, this one a cappuccino, also from the automated machine.
After breakfast, we headed to the reception to go ahead and pay for a late check-out. We opted for the 4:00 PM late check-out option for an additional Euro 20.00, we just did not feel it was worth the additional Euro 50.00 for us to stay about another two hours.
We headed back to the room and bundled up in warm clothing. We had decided to go to the waterfront open-air market, and then to head to the Helsinki Cathedral near the market. It was not that cold here today, but the wind was really blowing, so it was cold.
We also pre-purchased a day transit pass using the HSL App for the trams that we needed to ride to the market and back. The day pass was just slightly more than two single ride tickets, so it was just easier, we only needed to make one purchase and we were set. We each purchased the tickets on our individual phones since that was the setup for the app.
We headed out to the tram stop we needed that was just a few blocks from the hotel. Did I say it was windy? It was awful and I had not brought any type of head covering from the hotel. We made it to the tram stop just as a No. 7 tram was pulling in, we were not quite there, only a few feet away, but since no one got off, the tram did not stay long enough for us to open the door and get on. Now we had to wait another 10 minutes. We could also have taken the No 2 Tram, but I thought it would not take us as close to the market. One of the No. 2 Trams came by while we were waiting, but we stayed until the next No. 7 came and we got on.
It was only a few stops to the one closest to the market, and since we had been to Helsinki on a cruise several years ago, we were a little familiar with the area. We were tracking our progress on Google Maps since I had not written down the name of the stop we needed. When we thought the tram should have taken a right, it went left and we were now going away from the market, so we got off at the next stop, which was right next to the Cathedral. Once again we looked at Google Maps to make sure we knew which way to walk to the market, and on the way, we saw a No. 2 Tram go right by the market area, I guess I had mixed them up, we really should have taken the No. 2 for the market, not the No. 4, oh well. It was only a couple of blocks difference in walking and it was downhill because the market is next to the marina area.
I
t was still cold from the wind, and as one would figure, there were not many vendors at the market, and it was almost too windy to even look at the items for sake, so we just walked past and headed to the Orthodox Cathedral a couple of blocks away. We visited there on our earlier trip to Helsinki, and it is beautiful inside, but we opted just to take photos of the outside.
From there, we headed back toward the Helsinki Cathedral, we thought about going inside of it since we had opted not to do that the last time here, there were too many steps to climb that day and we had other things we wanted to see then. We had more time now, but before we climbed what I estimate to be about 50-60 steps up to the church, Stephanie checked 0n her phone to see if it was even open, and it was not since it was wintertime. At least that was what we initially thought, another website said it was about 8 euros to get inside per person, so open or not, we opted out, too many steps for my hip and too much cost, it is a really plain church on the inside from photos we have seen.
We had about enough of the wind, so we headed to the same No. 7 Tram Stop we had gotten off at earlier to take the tram back to the stop near the hotel. A Tram arrived a few long windy minutes later and we flagged it down and boarded.
When we got to our stop, we got off and decided to go to the CityMall to get a bite to eat somewhere inside.
We headed in but first stopped off to get a couple more of the small wine containers we had bought yesterday to have for the Night Train we take later on this evening. The wine was good and it was already chilled so we purchased two and loaded them into the backpack.
Next, we wandered around to find a place to eat and decided on a Pizza Restaurant, and headed inside. We were seated and then tried to figure out what we wanted to order for lunch. We decided to split a pizza with artichokes, ham, olives and mushrooms. The pizzas were good-sized, so we just split one and ordered two 0.5L draft beers to go with it. It was the quickest made-to-order pizza we have ever gotten, it literally came out in less than 5 minutes.
Obviously, the dough was already made and partially cooked, and then it was loaded with toppings and reheated in the brick oven they had. It was pretty good, but Stephaie’s half was a little charred on the bottom from the reheating. The beers were good, and in the end, we were full and enjoyed the relaxation out of the wind.
From there, we headed back to the hotel to rest and get our luggage repacked, we had gotten them a little bit in disarray from having to look for specific clothing to wear last night and today. It was a little before 2:00 PM when we got back to the room and tried to get in using our key card, it would not work. There was also a vacuum hose on the outer doors by our main door, so something was up. Of course, our first thought was that something had gone wrong with the late checkout, especially with the vacuum hose on the door.
We headed back down to the reception desk and they were not surprised about the keycard, the person told us that all of the expired reservation keys were automatically canceled at 2:00 PM and he needed to reprogram it. This seemed like something we should have been told earlier when we paid for the late checkout, but it was not.
We headed back upstairs to finish the packing and get ready to vacate the room right at 4:00 PM. We were still going to have about 2.5 hours to wait in the lobby before we headed to the train station to board our night train to Rovaniemi.
Right at 4:00 PM, we headed down to checkout. There were several automated checkout screens in the lobby, but I could not get any of them to work, so I got into the line to wait for the next representative. There were people checking in, so I had to wait for several people before it was my turn. The automated machines were apparently turned off now, I guess no one was supposed to be checking out this late unless they had paid a fee like us.
After checking out, we spent about two hours in the nice lobby sitting area. It was generally quiet but occasionally there were some kids coming in while their parents checked in. I was able to catch up on yesterday’s post and start this post for today while we waited.
We were getting a little antsy waiting for so long, so we decided to go ahead and start our walk to the train station. We used the same lift by the restaurant to avoid having to lug our suitcases down the front steps of the hotel, and that helped. It was a short walk to the train station entrance and we arrived at the same side door we came through yesterday, and had to go up the steps there into the station.
There was a type of ramp we tried to use, but the way it was constructed, there were steps in the middle of the two side ramps, and our wheels were not wide enough to roll up the somewhat steep ramp sections on either side of the steps. I guess it was spaced for the width of wheelchairs, but it would be a tough push up them due to their steepness, which was really the same as the normal steps we had to go up. It was a struggle, but we made it into the station and found the boars listing the platforms, and our train, which was supposed to arrive on Platform 8, but was not here yet.
We were a little warm from all of the luggage-toting efforts, so we headed outside of the station to the platforms and waited for a bit.
We looked for some type of sign showing the layout of where the train coaches would be once our train arrived at the station. We knew we were in the third car from the front in the direction of travel, and since this is a pull-into-only station, no trains actually passed through, so that meant the train would back in and we would be almost the farthest out from where we were right now, so we decided to walk a short distance out to some seats by the platform and wait there.
There was a large tour group of Asians on the platform, and they were heading pretty far out onto the platform. If the train was long, it would be a hike out to the front where we needed to be, so eventually, we headed a little farther out, mostly believing we would need to be this far out, but not certain enough to go more than we were now, just in case I was wrong.
Eventually, we saw a train backing into the station on Platform 8, so we knew this was our train. The first Coach (car) number we saw was 19, so that meant we had to go out at least 10 more coach lengths from the end of the train to our coach, and these coaches were long. As the train was backing in, we started walking farther out, and eventually, just after the train stopped, we only had two more coach lengths to go and we arrived at coach 29.
We boarded and found the steps up to the second deck where our room was located. We were in cabin 207/208, which was in the middle of the coach. The steps were narrow and it took us a bit to get our luggage up them to the second level, which had a narrow hallway down one entire side to access the rooms. We found our and went inside.
The room was quite small, much smaller than the night train we had taken from Venice to Vienna many years ago. There was only a tiny table and one seat beside it that a person could almost fit onto. The two bunk beds on the sides were lowered, so there was not much space to walk around, especially with our luggage inside. The only place to store the luggage was under the lower bunk, but that meant we had to open the suitcases, they were too high to fit under the bunk closed. Luckily, both suitcases fit under the bunk once they were open, so we only had my camera bag and Stephanie’s backpack to now find a home.
We got everything arranged and went back outside to take a picture of the train engine, two coaches more out on the platform. We still had about ten minutes before the train left, but we hurried out to the front, took pictures and headed back inside, we did not want the train to leave without us! There were a couple of other people doing the same thing, but everyone else was on board.
I forgot to mention that the group of Asians actually boarded our coach, well at least most of them, and they were all staying in the lower rooms, which do not have their own bathrooms like our upper cabin. It was a group of families, so there were quite a few, literally screaming with excitement, children. We were a little worried at first, they were really loud, but after a bit, things seemed to calm down, and the cabin was actually pretty quiet once we closed the door.
We left on time at 7:29 PM and this was the beginning of our
almost 12-hour journey northward to Rovaniemi, with our scheduled arrival at 7:20 AM in the morning.
We had brought on some wine, so we poured a plastic cup full and headed to check our the dining car in the middle of the train. It was quite a hike, we cold only go from coach to coach on the first floor, and that still involved going up and down a few steps at the end of each coach, and then through the automated doors separating the coaches at their ends.
The dining car was really more like a snack car, I guess they served food, but everything was ordered To Go from one lady at a counter of what looked like the tiny kitchen, there was no table service. As we walked through the car and into the next coach, we encountered a conductor who was on the phone helping out another passenger. he basically yelled at us for bringing alcohol out of the dining car, so we turned around and went back inside the dining car, which by the way, served small bottles of wine. We were a little perplexed, so we headed back to our room to figure out what the issue was.
Apparently, no alcohol is allowed to be consumed in public on Finnish trains, except in the dining car because it is run by a private company, and is not considered part of the public transportation system, it was strange, we have been on other trains and it was never an issue, but it is apparently I Finland. Of course, we never saw any signs indicating alcohol was not allowed to be taken from the dining car.
I forgot to mention that as we went from our coach to the dining car, we did pass through a couple of cars that were single-level, and had seats only, no rooms with beds, and there were quite a few passengers making the trip in those seats, which was a much cheaper option.
Back in the room, we settled in for the night, enjoying some more wine as we traveled. We did make a couple of stops where we could see more people board the train, and one couple got on our coach at one of these intermediate stops and we could hear them enter the room next door, they were one of our neighbors. Shortly after they boarded, we heard a baby crying next door. The crying did not last long and it was peaceful once again.
We listened to some music as we enjoyed the wine. We made one stop for at least 30-40 minutes, we sat on a side track for some reason. There were some announcements, but only in Finnish, which we also thought was weird, so we had no idea what was said, maybe they went over the rules about alcohol consumption……
Our room included a bathroom with a toilet, sink, and shower, but we did not intend on using the shower, it was sort of like a camper set up, there was a section of the wall that folded out to expose the shower and then to protect the toilet behind it, but the floor was the same, and would get soaked. We had also read that the hot water was spotty, so we had showered right before we left the hotel room earlier for that very reason.
We eventually decided we should try and get some sleep, so Stephanie took the upper bunk and I had the lower. We settled into bunk beds and set an alarm for 6:00 AM to give us time to get dressed in the cramped quarters and to replace our suitcases before we needed to get off the train in the morning. The train still had two more stops after we arrive in Rovaniemi, so it was only scheduled to be at that station for about 2 minutes, and everyone needed to get their luggage off the train, which was going to take some time.
Each bunk had a clock and bed lamp, as well as a small storage area and electrical outlet. The beds were pretty comfortable, but the pillows were quite thin.
It took a bit to get settled into our bunks, but eventually, we drifted off to sleep to the rocking of the train.
We will continue with this journey on the Night Train in the next post.
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