Around a park...
Since D. and I couldn’t make it to Morocco for the class break, we started looking around online for cheap rates at hotels and noticed that the Nordic countries — which were so expensive over the summer — were actually quite reasonable to visit in late October. Probably because it’s cold – but we don’t care. We are cold-weather people — we love chilly air, rain, clouds — basically, everything that depresses other people inspires us.
We never made it up to Finland over the summer, so we decided on Helsinki as our vacation spot. I got a great rate at the Hotel GLO, a very nice place located in the middle of downtown. It’s connected to the Hotel Kamp, which has a very lovely spa. Since we booked a suite, we also got free access to the spa, and the saunas. Can’t go to Finland without using a wood sauna, after all!
Our hotel room was decked out in typical Scandinavian design – wood floors (Why oh why don’t hotels in the U.S. do this? It’s so much cleaner than having some nasty carpeting!), minimal furniture, funky sinks and spigots. I particularly loved the table/lamps seen below. How multipurpose can you get?
Our hotel room had these table-lights. I want one!
Without giving you step-by-step account of everything we did, let me just say that, overall, we were very impressed by the city. It’s small. At just half-a-million inhabitants, its population is roughly the size of Milwaukee’s. Or Wyoming’s. And it’s beautiful. And very, very clean. No trash, no graffiti, no gross empty stretches of abandoned lots. No stinky alleyways.
Also, the architecture is amazing – every building in the central part of the city is either a lovely old 1890’s-type intricate buildling, a brightly-painted Art Deco building, or an Art Noveau building. They are all really well restored (or maintained).
Here are a few of my favorites:
Building across from our hotel
Beautiful old building near the Design Museum
Cool government office
The whole city looks like this! Amazing.
Leave a Reply