Category Archives: blog

Iceland day 12: to Vík

Since it’s only two hours to drive from Skaftafell to Vík, I started lazily before suddenly deciding that as the glacier was visible beneath lifted cloud, I’d do the hike up Svartifoss. I had a little over two hours before I was due to leave the campsite or incur a second day of payment and although I wasn’t sure how long the hike would take, I’d chance it.
It turns out Svartifoss is a little under 2km from the campsite and the path happened to start right by my van, which was very handy. It was also 173m of elevation, according to Strava. I huffed and puffed my way up, paused to take lots of photos of the view and of the waterfall as it came into view, in a little bite out of the Heath. When I reached it, I checked my stats – 37 minutes so far and I’d taken half a dozen photos before thinking to check that. If I wanted to be out by 11, then leaving the waterfall by 10:15 would do it.
I waded out a little into the river for a better photo. In 2013, last time I was up here, it didn’t have any of these platforms and railings – someone took a photo of me grinning in the river almost directly below the waterfall, where it’s now railinged off. But the new platform means you get a good view of it from about halfway up, so that’s nice.

As I descended – probably quicker than I climbed – I did a quick survey of everyone else’s clothes. I was wearing a t-shirt, my thin hiking trousers rolled up to just below my knees to get them out of streams, sandals, a shirt tied around me in case it got chilly and instead of a backpack full of essentials, I was carrying nothing but an elderly film camera. Most people were wearing sensible hiking layers, serious trousers and boots. Many of them looked more like they planned to climb Iceland’s highest mountain, Oræfajökull, which was opposite us on the other side of Skaftafell, rather than do the gentle hike to Svartifoss. Purplish-red is definitely this season’s colour for women’s hiking gear.
I got back to the van around 10:20, so I walked up to the visitor centre to see what the whiteboard outside the door said about the Svartifoss hike. “45 minutes each way”. Well. I’d done it in an hour and a half more or less on the dot and I’d huffed and puffed my way up that hill. Very clever, Vatnajökulsþjóðgarður people.
My first stop for the day was Kirkjubæjarklaustur (the one Icelandic place name I have to look up still; I can never remember where there’s an unexpected y or j). I wanted to look at the pseudocraters but it had started to rain and by now the world was obliterated under a grey haze of water. Well, I’d still stop at Klaustur (even locals find it a bit of a mouthful) but instead of pseudocraters, I’d go to the pool. That’s the trouble with Skaftafell: the only hot water within an hour in either direction is the campsite shower block. They’re nice showers, as these things go, but they’re not hot pots. Klaustur is also famous for a waterfall, I was to learn later, and you get a lovely view from the hot pots. I didn’t swim – I’m not criticising my choice of hiking outfit but I got sweaty and then apparently I got cold without noticing until I stepped under my pre-swim shower. So I was too cold to get in a 29° pool. The hot pot, at 38-40°, was uncomfortably hot, so I spent most of the hour and a half in the kids’ pool, which was a pleasant 34-36°. See, when I say I have a preferred temperature in actual numbers, I know what it is because Iceland labels almost all its pools. 36-38° is best, the range Klaustur’s pool was missing.
I had lunch in the van in the car park and then onwards another hour to Vík. I could have gone on quite a way but I still have two days to cover the 240km to the airport and I’m hoping to do the interesting part in the dry tomorrow. Besides, Vík is nice and kind of civilised – big campsite, big supermarket, massive tourist shop. The campsite wasn’t so big today, though. The large open field that makes up half the space was a bit of a pond and even the dry patches had thick mud with deep tyre tracks in them. Parking in the gravelled areas is reserved for vehicles that need electricity and that meant precious little space elsewhere. I initially parked by the facilities building but the idea of people walking past day and night, lights on, hand dryers whirring audibly even from here – no, there had to be somewhere else. And when I walked over to the supermarket, I looked more closely. There, next to that hill. There’s space between the hill and the deep mud. I knew I could drive on the grass because I’d done it earlier, when I’d discovered that a digger had blocked off the opposite end of what should be a circle and had had to turn around and come back. If I reversed on, my door would be against the hill and no one could squeeze even a bike in that gap. Someone was sure to park on the other side but I can’t see them there.

Settled, I hurried off to the pool. It closes at 8pm and it was 5.30 by now. Walking, of course. Once you get a good spot, you hang onto it. Besides, Vík is a tiny town and even including getting lost where the service centre meets the residential area, it only took 15 minutes to get there.

I did swim. I noticed it was very similar to Klaustur’s pool – 1.05m at one end, 1.5m at the other and the same snake slide with the same scale colours. The hot pot is also a little too hot but an American was asking questions and before I knew it, I was half-talking to and entirely listening to an Icelander (from Egilsstaðir, working at Fjallsarlon and driving two hours to Vík for food shopping) and two Poles who work in Iceland in the summer. Klaustur is known for its farmed Arctic char and its waterfall. Iceland has three jokes. Winter is very quiet.
I swam 40 lengths (although I lost count twice – could be out by two in either direction) and then I thought I’d better get out and wash & condition my hair before it closes. I came back the slightly longer way via the beach to take photos of the pinnacles in the haze. I have hopes of a better day tomorrow – blue sky and sunshine we’re trying, although not very successfully, to peek through the cloud.

The campsite continued to fill up. I spent the evening watching vans drive past me to discover there’s no more room further down and no way to finish the circle. I guarantee I’ll wake up to one parked immediately in front of me rather than anyone braving the soggy field but we’ll deal with that tomorrow. Won’t be parked in front of anyone else – van drivers know how to infuriate me very specifically while annoying no one else.

Iceland day 9: to Eskifjörður

Despite leaving Bjarg somewhere around 8.30am with the intention of flying across the Desert of Misdeeds (the Icelandicy, Ódáðahraun, is fun but the English is just epic), I didn’t actually get out of Mývatn until nearly 10.30. First I had to top up with fuel, since there’s no more until Egilsstaðir, then I wanted to run up and see Grjotagja, a cave flooded with boiling water that I should have done yesterday afternoon. So much better first thing in the morning before anyone else gets there. Then I gave in to the urge to buy a particular t-shirt I’d seen at the Nature Baths – which don’t open until 10. So I meandered my way up Krafla by way of the Mývatn viewpoint, the eternal shower, the Krafla viewpoint and the power station visitor centre (which also doesn’t open until 10).

It was windy. Down by the F88 junction there was a cloud that might have been a dust storm or a steam eruption or even Iceland’s fiercest river being blown into spray. It was dust. I was concerned that it would be dust all across the Desert and that the paint would be stripped off the van but that was the only dust storm. It stayed windy all the way, too windy to open the car doors at times.
According to Google Maps and the distances on signs, it should only take about two hours to get to Egilsstaðir. I made a few stops – got to get photos of The Desert of Misdeeds – and then as I thought I was running down into Egilsstaðir (except it was still 40 miles away), I spied signs for Stuðlagil. I think I’m the last person who’s been to Iceland to visit Stuðlagil. It’s a narrow canyon of basalt columns and the river is blue-green. Very beautiful. What no one ever mentions is that it’s also a 2 to 2.5km hike from the car park. I might have had lunch before I set off if I’d known.
It is indeed beautiful once you get there. There are two car parks, one at each end and on opposite sides and I completely by accident chose the best one. I also completely by accident sat in a puddle to take my mandatory selfies and didn’t realise until I stood up.

40 miles onwards to Egilsstaðir where I stopped to stock up on food and then onwards again to Eskifjörður.
If the last few campsites were anything to go by, and my experience of Egilsstaðir’s campsite two years ago, I’d be parking in another overcrowded car park. Eskifjörður, as its name suggests, is down on the fjord, two villages away from the big town and has a lovely swimming pool which turned out to be easy walking distance from the tiny campsite. Unfortunately, the pool closed 25 minutes after I arrived and won’t even be open for a first-thing swim tomorrow because it appears to be some kind of bank holiday. So another evening in the van.

Day four: Berlin to Poznan

This was the other travel day that I was a bit concerned about. When I first had the idea and began putting the route together, back in March or April, there was a direct train which continued to Warsaw. Tht fr in advance was just too far to book, though, and by the time it was allowed, it had become a local train to Frankfurt Oder, on the Polish border, followed by the express to Warsaw, jumping off at Poznan. But a week or so – probably less – before I set off, I got an email from Deutsche Bahn saying that my journey didn’t exist anymore and to click here for alternatives. Do I even need to say that there were no alternatives?

No, there are always alternatives. I went back to DB’s ticket booking system and discovered that the alternative was to weave my way through Berlin’s public transport system, with half of the S-bahn in the city centre missing, to Erkner, at the far end of the S3. I could get on that local train from there to Frankfurt and then back on the original Polish Intercity that I’d originally planned. What I actually did would depend on where my local stop was, whether it was convenient, what the best route was from there and exactly which bits of Berlin were closed. My nearest station was a couple of hundred metres away at Naturekundemuseum, which is on the U6 – so much easier than taking the tram two stops west to Hbf and starting from there. I’d looked at my connections and I needed to be on the U-bahn by 8.45 to get to Frankfurt with enough time to not feel stressed and in the end, I was on it by about ten past eight. A few stops south to Friedrichstrasse, moment of “where is platform 6???” (DB helpfully gives platforms to save you the hassle of finding a departure board!) and onto the S3. Moment of doubt here because according to the signs, eastbound trains left from the left-hand side and westbound from the right but the eastbound Erkner train was on the right – agreed by both the electronic departure board and all the signs inside the train. By the time we reached Alexanderplatz, I was satisfied because there the signs were on the correct side – but the fact we reached Alexanderplatz at all said we were going in the right direction.

Erkner is right out in the woods. The electronic boards don’t bother listing half the stops, so at least twice I thought we’d reached the end of the line and we hadn’t. Then we came into platform 32 and I had to find the train on platform 2. Actually, the S-bahn lines are all numbered in the 30s and then down the side is the mainline station which may have more than one or two platforms but the Frankfurt train was waiting right there. I was expecting something like a slightly overgrown metro train and this was a full-size double-decker real train. Of course I sat upstairs!

It was only 35 minutes on the local train to Frankfurt. An easy transfer to the right platform and there sat the Warsaw Express, more than 40 minutes before it was due to depart. I was suspicious. The last time I got on a train that was waiting on the platform suspiciously early was in Helsinki and instead of ending up in the Arctic, I ended up going through the train wash and into the rail depot ten miles up the road. So I lurked. “See if other people get on” isn’t foolproof because that’s exactly what I did in Helsinki but it all seemed real enough. The signs on the train – at least on the outside – matched up and once I was aboard and looking dubiously at the signs in the corridor which gave nothing more than the date and time, I spied railway staff directing people onto the train and into the correct coaches.

You get assigned seats here, whether you like it or not. I was in coach 368 (why not just number them 1-4?) and seat 15. Polish trains, as far as I can see from this one and the one I got from Sopot to Gdansk a few years ago, tend towards compartments rather than rows of seats. My seat was by the window and facing forward and my compartment empty. I hoisted my bag onto the luggage rack, took out my phone charger and plugged it into the green-illuminated personal socket next to my seat and made myself comfortable. Not so comfortable when a large man with an even larger suitcase came and sat next to me. Nothing personal, that’s just his assigned seat. I was pretty convinced that suitcase was falling out of the rack and killing someone on the way, though. And then a couple with a kid came and filled up three of the remaining four seats and the last role was taken by a girl who looked far too young to be travelling across national borders – albeit Schengen ones – by herself.

We sat together on that train for the best part of half an hour before it finally set off – late. I can see no reason why a train that’s been sitting there for so long should be late departing. My compartment-mates had pretty much eaten their lunches before we left.

It was a little over an hour and a half to Poznan. Five or ten minutes maximum to the river that forms the border just here and then ninety-ish minutes of green countryside, wind turbines, builders yards, farmland and the occasional small town before we reached Poznan.

Poznan Glowny, the main station, was very busy. It was just after 12.30pm. I had the afternoon to explore but what to do with my luggage? As far as I could see, only four of the luggage lockers took cards and I had no Polish currency at all, let along coins. Well, my apartment is in the tower literally on the other side of the road so I’d go over there, see if I could get in (unlikely, two hours early) and leave my luggage if not. It turned out the room was ready – well, the cleaner was just leaving as I walked through the door. I’m on the 16th floor, overlooking the station, some of the more high-rise part of town and mile after mile of trees, chimneys and more greenery. 10/10 view. With only one night to enjoy my apartment – not only with a view but a fridge, a sofa, an armchair, a gigantic shower and a king-size bed (ok, it’s so big it covers the light switch and plug socket that are meant to be on the side of it), it seemed a shame to waste time there by going out and seeing Poznan but I had to go out and see Poznan. According to Google Maps and the cover of the book I brought with me (“A Chip Shop in Poznan” by Ben Aitken!), there was a very decorative town square.

It was about a 20 minute walk away, during which time I discovered that you can’t go 100m without coming across the next Zabka convenience store. And then the square was dead ahead and it was stunning. It’s four sides of tall thin colourful houses, exactly the sort you’d expect in an Old Town. All less than 80 years old, of course – like much of Poland, most of this square was rebuilt after being very literally flattened in WWII – but it’s still very pretty. There’s a fountain with a mythical figure in each corner and in the middle is the most spectacular town hall I’ve ever seen.

I was hungry. Producing a loaf of bread and a packet of cheese slices on a busy train is inconvenient and I’d left them in the fridge when I came out because I didn’t want to carry everything. There were cafes under big white umbrellas everywhere and I immediately decided I wanted to rest my feet, have a cold drink and eat some chips. Finding somewhere that looked like it might do just some chips was a bit of a challenge but the answer came unexpectedly at a Mexican restaurant – although they couldn’t bring themselves to do plain plain chips (“What about salt? Yes, absolutely, as much salt as you want). I had a seat, I had shade, I had a drink, I could see two sides of the square – and I was hassled by a wasp so much that at one point I accidentally threw my (95% empty) glass down on the table at it. I can’t bring myself to squish it but if wasps just went extinct, I wouldn’t mind.

A bit more time in the square and then I went souvenir shopping. I wanted some postcards and I wanted a badge for my camp blanket with a picture of the square on it. Or, as I searched the city fruitlessly, maybe just a badge of any kind. Poznan is big on magnets but non-existent on badges. In my search, I came across a great fountain, a big shiny glass modern thing in two halves that you could walk through, great for cooling down, some frescoes on a wall, a brick castle that’s actually an art museum and like everything in Poznan except Zabka, closed on Mondays. That was enough for the afternoon. I was hot and tired and ready to come home. My train tomorrow isn’t until 4.45 so I have plenty of time to read my guidebook this evening and see what else there is to see in Poznan but if I do nothing else, I’m satisfied to have spent an afternoon in that square.

I did pop out again. I searched the station for a souvenir shop. I didn’t search the big attached shopping centre but I suspect it’s not overwhelmed with rubbish souvenir shops. But I did want to get something else to drink, partly because I don’t have much and partly in the hope of getting a 1zl piece. Standing in front of a large bottle of orange juice, mentally calculating “if I give them this note, I get this change…” to figure out if it’s going to do the magic I wanted. And it did!

You see, opposite my tower is a little park and in the park is a duckpond. And at the top of the slope leading down to the duckpond is a dispenser for duck food, only you need to put a 1zl coin in. I was a bit worried, it being gone 7pm, that the machine would be empty and I’d have got my coin for nothing but it worked! Handful of birdseed! All the pigeons in the park running to me and then all the ducks on the pond paddling at me as fast as they can. Yes, ducks. It took a moment to realise it’s an entire pond of girl ducks and not a single boy in sight. Unless they’re not mallards and a species of duck that all look like female mallards.

Ducks fed, I came home, put my big bottle of orange juice in the fridge for breakfast (there’s a Zapka right outside so I’ll get fresh bread in the morning and check out just about as late as possible) and now I’m sitting on my balcony, listening to my neighbours playing Eminem and planes coming in overhead (at least, I think they are – I have no idea where Poznan Airport is) and writing this balanced uncomfortably on my knees.

Finland: 30th May

I started today with a tiny revelation: the easiest way to get to Lidl for my fresh breakfast bread is to walk down the road and along instead of up the road and along as the bottom end of the road is flat. Then I wanted to cross some more things off my to-do list.

First, Uspensi Cathedral. The 7 tram takes me directly from just up the road to Senate Square and then it’s a short walk across to the cathedral. This one was more what I expected. It’s small, both cathedrals are very small, but it was decorated more or less how I’d expected. Lots of saints, lots of lettering, lots of patterns and colour. Then I walked back up to the nearest tram stop and took the 4 north to the Church in the Rock. I knew it was out of the city centre but I hadn’t realised it’s only three or four stops from the central station. It’s not exactly in a cave, as some places would have you believe. There’s a big dome of rock in the middle of a square with Art Deco apartment blocks on each side and the church has been dug out of that, with a big copper dome over the top held up by concrete supports. Yes, it’s in the rock but effectively – at least as far as the rock is concerned – it’s entirely open at the top.

I took the tram back to town for a little souvenir shopping, mostly for postcards and stickers for my scrapbook although I also invested in a sauna cover of my very own. Then I walked down Esplanade and stopped in the park for an ice cream. When I’d eaten that, I continued down towards the harbour where there were boats doing sightseeing tours. Well, that was on my list so I got on the first one, a city tour leaving at 1.30. The inside was pretty much full but there were only two or three people sitting outside on the top deck and the ladies who were selling tickets assured us that the clouds were disappearing and they had blankets. I claimed a blanket before I’d even picked a seat and was glad I had it. It was chilly on the water, even before we set off, and we hadn’t left the harbour area before it started to rain. Well, I’d say “‘drizzle”‘ but the few raindrops were the big heavy kind. Not enough for those of us on deck to take cover but enough for us to pull the blankets over our heads. By the time we’d made our way out past Sirpalesaari and seen Loyly in the distance, the rain had stopped and we could feel the warm sun again. We went past Suomenlinna, under the new bridge and past Laajasalo and Kulosaari and then did a big circle around Mustikkamaa, the leafy island where most of the embassies live, past Korkeasaari and round to Katajanokka. From Korkeasaari yesterday I’d seen a fleet of large ferries moored off Katajanokka and wondered about them. Now I discovered they’re actually Finland’s icebreakers, who don’t have a lot to do this time of year. As we headed back into the harbour, a freezing wind came up. I wished I had another blanket. Ten more blankets. Funny how the temperature skyrockets when you’re back on dry land.

I walked home (I hadn’t measured any walking today and needed my 2km) to finish off my bread and butter, dump my shopping and pick up my jacket ready for that trip to Suomenlinna I keep saying I’ll do. This was helped immensely by the walk back from the harbour only being 1.9km. I needed to go out to do my extra mileage! So at last I made it to Suomenlinna for a proper late afternoon/evening there, without the worry about the wind warning or the giant threatening cloud. I sketched the swimming bay, ate a korvapuusti I bought yesterday, panicked that the Tallinn/Stockholm ferry was going to plough into the island at speed, finally found the King’s Gate, discovered that Strava didn’t record my walk around the island properly and finally got the 8.40 ferry back. Then it’s five or ten minutes up the road to the tram stop, ten minutes for the tram to arrive and it delivered me to the top of the road.

Tomorrow I need to be on the airport train by about 1pm so I’m going to leave my luggage at the station again and decide what to do later.

Finland: 29th May

Breakfast this morning was (slightly stale) baguette left over from last night before going up the road to get the tram to the station where I had to find the 16 bus out to Korkeasaari, which is the island with a zoo on it. First Helsinki bus, discovery that my cardboard five-day ticket has some secret electronics inside it as it makes the ticket reader ping when I hold it against it, and twenty minutes through some very cobbled streets and some open roads only to discover, as I crossed the bridge to Korkeasaari, that the cathedrals are just a couple of hundred metres away. There’s a new bridge being built and I later found a sign explaining all the works: in 2027, they’re planning to open a new light railway which will run along the bottom of this island, connecting it directly to the city centre. I’m not entirely certain why this light railway means Korkeasaari is getting its own tram stop but whatever, it’s going to get easier to get there.

I was expecting something more like an Alpine wildpark, a semi-open place where mostly native animals roamed and the shores of the island were always visible. And there were bits of shore, mostly roped off because of nesting barnacle geese, but it felt a lot like a normal zoo. There was a tiger and three camels and some wallabies (these come under the title kengurut in Finnish) and monkeys and moose-like things and yak-like things and everything you’d expect in a zoo except elephants and giraffes. It’s a labyrinth and between the rocks, the enclosures and the trees, it’s mostly very easy to forget you’re on an island rather than just in a zoo on land as normal.

I didn’t take the bus all the way back to the city centre. I hopped off after about four stops and got the metro back instead. Not because there was any particular reason to, just because it was a method of transport I haven’t used yet. It turned out to be a good idea – I spied some empty seats from the platform and when I went to sit on them, I discovered that some of them were empty because there was an enormous black and tan dog asleep under them. He looked up when a small poodly thing boarded and had a good sniff but stayed down and stayed quiet and when it was out of sight and he’d sniffed enough, he went back to sleep.

Back at the station, I got in a bit of a tangle about finding a tram down to Senatintori, Senate Square. It would have been quicker and easier to walk. Trams leaving from the central station, I think, take a bend around the shopping centre to get to Aleksanterinkatu and so go in the opposite direction to the one I expect. I got there eventually. This is really Helsinki’s main square and it seems the done thing is to sit on the steps up to the cathedral. So I did. It was a warm day (I went out in shorts!) but it’s breezy and apparently the steps are immune to breeze. It’s the warmest place in Helsinki to sit and the stone is warm from the sun as well.

I wanted to go into the cathedrals. The white one is Helsinki’s main Protestant/Lutheran church. It’s a big white confection with corners and domes and gold and it is utterly underwhelming inside. Even St Paul’s isn’t as bare and boring. Oh yes, you can see the inside of the five domes but they’re all sponged in pale blue with no decoration at all. Uspenski Cathedrall, the big red Orthodox one, is closed on Mondays and still apparently the place to have your Helsinki photoshoot. As I walked around it in the hope of figuring out which door is in use, I spied the shop/pier on Korkeasaari through the buildings behind the cathedral. I compared the distance to the distance back to the main station. If you could walk on water, it’s not more than a mile away. Easily walking distance. But you have to go around the edge of the bay and you have to walk through a giant construction site and so taking a bus right out of the city is still the best way to get there.

What else was on my to-do list? The big wheel. That’s just down by the sea. I’d go and see if I could get on. No reason why not – it was going round and with no one on board. Surely SkyWheel couldn’t say “too busy, come back in 45 minutes”? They didn’t. They gave me a ticket – an actual ticket, not a receipt! – and sent me round to the queue, which was the two groups who’d been in front of me at the ticket office. We had our photos taken and I must remember to download my photos, and then I boarded from gate 4.

I had no idea how many times we were going to go round. It seemed to go pretty quickly and I was glad, and not surprised when we went a second time. Not surprised at the third. I was surprised when we went round a fourth time, though. Obviously I had a cabin to myself so I could hop from side to side depending on what I wanted to see. Views over the bay and out to Suomenlinna. Eye-level views of Uspenski. Birds-eye view of Allas Sea Pool. I saw the hot tub down below and finally found the sauna cabin four or five in front of me. I think I’ve had enough sauna but if I was here with a few more people and it was worth the money, I’d definitely go for the sauna/hot tub/SkyWheel package.

By now I was hungry and tired. I wanted some food and I wanted to swap my shorts for trousers so I could go over to Suomenlinna for the evening again. I took the tram up to Stockmann and did a little shopping – ok, I did a little wandering around feeing that this place is too big and too expensive and is full of things I don’t particularly want to buy anyway, but eventually I found the big gourmet supermarket hiding on the minus second floor and stocked up on bread, drink and korvapuustia and came home.

I knew what would happen. I ate my bread, I charged my phone, I changed into my trousers and then I lay down on the bed to wait for the bread to settle down and here I still am. I am never getting up at 2am for a flight again. It just isn’t worth it.

What are tomorrow’s plans? Well, I still have plenty on my to-do list. Uspenski and the Church in the Rock are the main things to cross off. I might go over to Seurasaari but I’ve been there before and with limited time left, I might find another island, or go to that beach, or find another sauna. Can I be bothered with another sauna? Carrying wet swimming things around just to sit in a small room that’s too hot? I know and appreciate that it’s a Finnish tradition but I really prefer the Icelandic tradition of sitting in warm water. That’s virtually unknown here. I wish the nice pool up the road was open because that would be the perfect last-evening thing to do. Maybe I’ll go back to Suomenlinna tomorrow night.

Finland: 28th May

I was quite chuffed last night that I went to bed early thanks to the time difference. It didn’t occur to me until this morning that it worked the other way round in the mornings – when I woke up at just gone 9, that’s 7 in time I’m used to. Going back to sleep wasn’t an option: I had a booking at Loyly at 11:15 and I had to have breafast, get ready and figure out how to get there. I didn’t have much in for breakfast. I had a cup of apple juice while I was getting dressed and I thought I’d walk to the supermarket and get some more ciabatta. It’s a bit of a pain but it’s like living on a campsite, where you walk to the shop and get your fresh bread in the morning. I made it all the way downstairs before I realised it’s Sunday at which point my phone informed me that the K-Market wasn’t open until 10am today. No fresh bread for breakfast. I made do with TUC biscuits and a couple of pieces of chocolate. It’s not breakfast but tomorrow I can fetch my fresh bread for breakfast from the Lidl I’ve discovered literally two streets down the road. If you use the self-service, you have to scan your receipt to open the gate to leave, which is a novelty.

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. After my imperfect breakfast, I gathered what I needed, put suncream on my face and walked three streets down the road to the 6 tram which would take me within a four-minute walk of Loyly. Four minutes for a snail, perhaps. I had a better idea after Allas about the Finnish feelings about time so I knew that at 10.45, I’d better entertain myself enjoying the view and the sun on the shore instead of trying to get into the building just yet. Blue sky, sunshine and warmth is such a novelty here for me! From my chosen rock, I could see the sauna side of Loyly’s deck and the famed Baltic swimming spot. It might have been warm and sunny but it was breezy and I suspected there wouldn’t be many swimmers today, not with the sea as rough as that.

Most of the building is actually a restaurant and cafe. The sauna occupies only about a third of it. As yesterday, there are maybe thirty lockers and just enough space for half a dozen people to change at once. On the other side are the showers and the then beyond that is the sauna area. Both saunas – both public saunas, anyway – are massive six-foot metal boxes. You lever the lid off with a foam-insulated handle two feet long and then use a massive ladle to tip water in and again, you feel the temperature shoot up the second the water hits the stones inside.

The second sauna is visible inside, in that you can see the corner squared off where it must be but the door is actually outside. This is the smoke sauna. It didn’t feel any different except that it’s dark – the main sauna has a glass wall and a big glass door but the only glass in this is a single window upstairs on one side. Your eyes so adjust but you can see every single newcomer struggle to figure out where there are seats. The other clue that this is the smoke sauna is that you can occasionally see people with patches of soot on them.

In between saunas, you can use the showers or you can sit in the lounge or you can do as most people do, sit outside on the deck. I did that for a while – sunbathing on the edge of the Baltic! – but I was acutely aware that it was sunny and I was lying in the sun and I’d only put suncream on my face. It occurs to me now that I took it with me, so I could have gone back to the lockers and put some on but at the time I was just vaguely aware that I didn’t want to get burnt by deliberately lying out in the sun.

You get two hours, which is plenty for me. When I was dried and dressed, I went to the restaurant. While I was figuring out how to get into the sauna, I’d spied a huge plate of korvapuustia, Finnish cinnamon rolls . Actually, I spied them in the supermarket yesterday but really wasn’t in the mood for trying something new. Now I was. I took my korvapuusti and my Coke and went out onto the deck, only to decide it was too bright to sit in the sun and find a seat in the shade where I could actually see what I was eating. The korvapuusti was tasty. Very sweet, not overly cinnamonny, a very good idea. Just twice the size I could manage. For future reference, I’ll be carrying around one of the little paper bags I brought my bread rolls in just in case I need to transport half a korvapuusti home again. This time I had to put it in my hat.

I’d spotted the Lidl on my way to the tram this morning so I stopped for fresh rolls for lunch and I’ve been writing this so far while eating those. Then I had a little rest – I got up at 2am yesterday! – which became a longer rest and it was getting on for 5 by the time I packed up my stuff and headed out again. I thought I’d go to Suomenlinna. I watched the ferries going backwards and forwards from the pool yesterday so I knew there was plenty of time. Bonus: the ferries are zone A in Helsinki public transport and therefore are free with my 5-day ticket.

Suomenlinna, which is the Castle of Finland, is a former fortress guarding the bay from invading Swedes/Russians, depending on the year. These days it still seems to be home to a naval training place but a lot of it is mixed open air museum and old buildings turned into cafes. If you’re there betwen about 10am and 5pm, there’s somewhere for a drink and a snack approximately every five minutes across the entire chain of islands. Afterwards, next to nothing, although there’s a kiosk on Susisaari that was still open as I was walking back. After 5pm, it’s quieter than during the day – you’ll still have someone walk in on you every time you think you’ve found a spot to take a selfie undetected but it’s not busy. It’s a nice place to amble, especially the last island, whose name I’ve forgotten. I know it’s a lot of military buildings with turf roofs and cannons pointed out to sea but it looks like Hobbiton and there are ponds and geese in the middle. Unfortunately, Helsinki had a wind warning at the time so it was chilly (well done me for bringing that packable jacket!) and there were threatening-looking black clouds. I nearly turned back and ran for home at the sight of those but when I stopped to look, they seemed to be heading away from Suomenlinna and towards Helsinki so I stayed.

An hour and a half after I boarded the boat back, the sky is so clear and blue that I’m half-tempted to go out again. It’s quarter to nine and I want to go to bed early tonight. I made plans for various places to get fresh bread on the way home but there’s a mini supermarket by the quay on Suomenlinna. I got in, got bread and juice (raspberry, pear, strawberry & lemon) and made it back to the quay before the incoming boat had docked, so I’m sitting at my desk with my orange juice and a plate that I’ll wash up tomorrow. I stayed out longest on the boat. I was still there when we docked and everyone else had retreated inside. It was chilly and my hands were cold from holding the camera out but I can survive a cold breeze for 15 minutes. It was a lot warmer back on the mainland. I walked up to Senate Square and took the 7 tram all the way back to the top of the hll again. So that’s three things crossed off my to-do list plus one I didn’t now existed. Zoo Island tomorrow and I’m hopefully going to squeeze in at least the two cathedrals afterwards and maybe finish the day on the big wheel.

Finland: 27th May

2am is a bad time for an alarm to go off, even to go to Finland. I made it to Heathrow with no problems: well, I made it to the edge of the airport with no problems. A mis-reading of the satnav led me to the gates of the staff car park with no easy way to escape. It’s effectively a slipway off the road that runs around the airport so you can’t just turn round and go back to the traffic lights you shouldn’t have turned right at. Obviously I couldn’t go in and straight to the exit because I’m not staff so there were a few panicked minutes of “What do I do???” before I spied the gap in the bollards between the entrance lane and the exit lane and managed to reverse to it without hitting the handful of incoming cars.

Next problem: got through security just before 5am to find my gate wasn’t announced until 6.30. Excellent. That gives me a leisurely hour and a half for breakfast! But at that time in the morning, there was nothing open except Pret, and they don’t do toast. The pink place with the “Instagrammable Lattes” menu opened but they only had pretty toast, not proper toast. Spuntino’s does proper toast. The internet eventually told me it opens at 5.30 but it didn’t actually open its doors until 5.45 and then I had a second lot of toast and I was still desperately trying to catch my waiter for the bill at 6.27 so I was rushing after all.

I snoozed on the plane until Denmark. Followed the west coast up to Skagen, across to Sweden, all across the south of Sweden, across the Gulf of Bothnia, across lots of tiny scattered islands that actually weren’t the coast of Finland and then we were in Finnish airspace and making our descent. I’m not sure I’ve ever noticed a desceent quite as much as I noticed that one. It felt like a long, controlled dive. Which it is, but usually it’s fairly gradual and you don’t feel it.

Vantaa is a fairly small airport, at least in comparison to a lot of capital cities. There were 21 passport desks and only four open – two for people with real passports and two for the rest of us so that was a bit of a queue (and then she stamped my passport in the back instead of the front!). Lots of food places, cafes, restaurants, supermarkets etc in arrivals. I got some crisps and chocolate for the journey, since breakfast was fairly early and I’d missed lunch. I found the station, which is down at least four floors in an open-fronted lift that just plummets into the abyss (I did it twice, once because I needed to and once because I wanted to film it) and then went down to the platform. I’d planned to get a five day AB ticket but Vantaa is in zone C and it worked out cheaper to get a five day ABC ticket than my planned ticket plus a separate ticket from and then back to the airport. It’s a nice easy train, much easier than figuring out (or checking in advance…) which bus to get.

I sat in the sun outside the central station to eat my little lunch and then, since my room code wasn’t going to be delivered for another two hours, I left my luggage in a locker and walked down to the harbour. There was Allas Sea Pool, sparkling in the sun. I’d considered bringing my swimming things and spending the afternoon in the pool but in the end, it seemed easier not to pull my suitcase apart on the floor of the luggage room at the station and I hadn’t bothered. I did get a ticket for the Flying Cinema, though, since it’s right there. It’s a bit like FlyOver Iceland – a drone film of spectacular scenery and they swing you around in a big chair and spray you with water to make you feel like you’re up close to waterfalls. It’s not quite as good as FlyOver, though. For one thing, just as you’re starting to feel like you’re zooming across a landscape, it abruptly changes. The movement is sometimes jerky and it really felt like it was struggling up one mountain. And FlyOver lifts you up so your feet are off the ground and you’re sitting above a huge concave screen that fills your entire vision, whereas Flying Cinema leaves your feet on the floor, the screen is the usual big rectangle and you have to wear 3D glasses to feel like you’re in it, which is awkward for those of us with glasses. But it was a good way to fill 15 minutes and I do recommend it.

I checked my phone when I came out and I had my message from the hotel. Room code! So I walked back to the station, retrieved my luggage and walked up to the accommodation, not helped by my phone refusing to use the mobile data. The map that I followed halfway there abruptly decided it wasn’t going to work so that was good. I knew by that point that I had to walk up the top of the hill, turn down that road that I can see from here and it’s a street or two down on the right and I soon came across the street sign so I knew I was in the right place.

Once I was in and could be bothered, I went out for some real food. The tiny supermarket across the road didn’t have anything except too many people so I put the chocolate and the basket back and went to the big one up the road, which is indeed big and laid out bewilderingly. I got everything I needed eventually. Finland is big on “tummaa leipa” which is dark rye bread and anything else is hard to find but there are ciabatta rolls which go nicely with the butter I found. You have to weigh them and print the label for them so thank you to the people I witnessed doing that.

When I’d eaten, I decided to go to Allas for the evening. It was still sunny and warm. I got down there, queued in the shop to be told (at 7pm) that they were full and only had slots for 7.45. Pool closes as 9, which means they lock the door. You have to be out by 8.40, so I’d only get an hour instead of the three hours you usually get. Fine. I went back to the rooftop bar to look at it while I waited. This is full? I have had baths that are more crowded! No one in the sea pool, two people in the kids’ pool and maybe eight people in the geothermal pool. No one sunning themselves on the decking anymore. Unless the saunas were packed like sardines, Allas has a very odd idea of “full”.

I understood a little better when I finally got in. They’re very short on changing space and lockers. That’s definitely something they need to improve because if a dozen, maybe a couple of dozen, people on a sunny Saturday afternoon constitutes “‘so full we’ve closed our ticket office”, that’s a problem. This is a glorious geothermal pool right in the heart of the capital of the country that invented sauna. This place should be heaving! The Blue Lagoon would laugh in their faces.

They could learn a lot from the Blue Lagoon. I didn’t even try the cold sea pool. The kids’ pool was lukewarm, which is cold when you’re on the edge of the Baltic in a swimming costume. The geothermal pool was better but I’d expect heat, not warmth. It was warm enough to drift back and forth as the sun went down but definitely not the “‘geothermal heated pool” I’d expected. The sauna was quite pleasant and definitely warmed me up quickly, after scurrying the entire length of the decking back to it.

I didn’t stay for the full hour. It was about 8.35 by the time I decided the sauna was getting too hot. I got changed, I walked back to Senate Square and took the tram back to the top of the hill above the little tree-filled square opposite my hotel and when I’d hung everything up and eaten some chocolate, I went to bed. It was only about 10.30 when I turned off the light but that’s 8.30 at home and that’s a good thing after getting up at 2am.

Sunday 18th: Frankfurt day 6 (Wiesbaden)

Yesterday I bought my ticket for Wiesbaden (technically a day pass for an extended zone of the local public transport) and so today I went to Wiesbaden. I took the S1 and it was a pleasant journey – not too busy and a lot of winter wonderland scenery along the way, although there was a lot of ugly industrial stuff too. Some nice fences, blue ombré and then green layer on.

I’d checked the Therme situation and the big famous one is closed to save energy. The other is open but its bubble bench and whirlpool are closed because it’s proving impossible to get replacement parts for them. But there’s an indoor pool and an outdoor pool and I thought I’d go for it.

I could have taken a bus because it’s three and a half kilometres from the Hbf but I wasn’t sure which bus or whether my day ticket was valid and anyway, I needed my 2km so I walked. I’m glad I did – once I was across the busy main road it was pretty much parks all the way, all white and frozen, with frozen lakes and weird unfamiliar geese. It took 55m to walk up to the Therme and I decided the walk alone had been worth coming here. Frankfurt is very nice but I haven’t had much opportunity to roam in crunchy snow in parks.

And the Therme! I saw it billowing steam from the other end of the park. There’s an indoor area linked to an outdoor area. The indoor one is mostly full of children and then you swim outside and it’s all green water and steam and half-frozen gardens and it was amazing. I did have to keep going back inside to defrost my nose but it was wonderful. Very worth the trip and the walk.

I came back through town. Not much in the way of Christmas market here but also, it was Sunday afternoon and the town was closed. I was delighted to discover my hair had frozen – frozen far more stiffly than it did that time in Longyearbyen. I don’t think Germany is colder than the High Arctic but it was a longer walk back to the station than it had been from the pool to the hotel in Svalbard. I detoured to see the current hot spring. It’s inside a fake stone building, locked away behind a chipboard door but there are manholes nearby and those are steaming adequately.

Now I’m on the S8 home. I looked up the timetable: 56 minutes back to Frankfurt Hbf so I thought I’d use the free wifi to write today’s blog.

Saturday 17th: Frankfurt day five

I went out pretty early this morning. The market was calling and it turned out there was a lot I hadn’t found, including the Pink Market. It’s pretty pink but it’s not so much a market as a square full of places to eat and drink – absolutely dead at 10.30am. Further on was the Red Market – or that was how I translated it. Nothing particularly red about it. The Pink Market was very pink. The Red Market was also dead at that hour but there was a Lindt shop behind it so I invested in some Lindor.

Then I went home to drop off my shopping and fetch my swimming stuff. If I was in Iceland I’d have been to the pool every day. Now I knew how it all worked. On the other hand, it’s Saturday so a lot more children. I knew they’d turned the temperature down 2 degrees but today I could feel it and I wasn’t entirely unhappy to get out. I took the tram route up and back – much quicker and quieter than the long journey on the U1.

I came home and warmed up in a hot shower, had some food, wrote yesterday’s blog etc and then went back to the market. I’ve seen it all and you can’t see anything in the evening because it’s just too busy but it calls me and so I went. Had a wander and a shove, a cup of hot chocolate, got a glimpse of fireworks which turned the misty sky bright red and came home. There was a concert on the roof overlooking Römerberg.

On the way back I discovered Wiesbaden is on Frankfurt’s S-bahn. So I bought a day ticket for tomorrow so I guess I’m going there, whether I swim or not.

Now I’m catching up on blogs and watching Netflix.

Friday 16th: Frankfurt day 4 (Cologne)

Today is Saturday but I haven’t written yesterday’s blog yet.

I woke up quite early, had my breakfast and was out not long after 9. I went to the station because I wanted to go to Cologne. Why didn’t I come here when Germany still had the 9 euro train tickets thing? Well, the cheapest way to get to Cologne was on a few haystack trains which would take three and a half hours each way. Not worth the effort. The second cheapest way was to book specific and non-flexible tickets. The 10:09 out and the 18:18 back.

The 10:09 was delayed but only by about seven minutes. It was packed until the airport and then a lot quieter – I got two seats to myself! The countryside was very pretty – snow in Germany appears to cling on where feet and wheels don’t disturb it. It snowed in Frankfurt on Wednesday morning and there’s still a car down the road with an inch of snow in it, although as more and more people write in it, it’s getting less and less. The countryside was the same. Fields and trees all grey and white and glittering and absolutely winter wonderland-perfect.

My train was to Cologne Messe and I decided I hated Cologne. How do you get to the Hauptbahnhof? I found the S-bahn but there was no way of buying tickets. I found the U-bahn. Also no way of buying tickets and no map. Ticket machines, luckily, were lurking right down on the platform and although there were still no helpful signs telling you which direction the train was going, I found a city-wide map and eventually figured out a) where I was b) where I was trying to get to c) what combination of trains I required for that d) which direction those trains needed to go. It shouldn’t be that difficult!

I planned to change trains so I bought a day ticket. But when we arrived at the change station, it was basically a tram stop, right in the middle of the street, and there was a Christmas market between me and the Dom. So a walk! Walk through the Christmas market!

This was the old-fashioned market. All the stalls had matching wooden fronts, half the stallholders had old-fashioned costumes on, there was an ice rink and the mugs were dark red with yellow insides and round bellies. I discovered eventually that the end of that market led on to the Dom Christmas Market and they had different mugs and their stalls were higher and brighter and marked with shooting stars. Lots of the same stalls, though. Lots of the same stalls as in Frankfurt.

And here was the Dom! It was free to go in and it was breathtaking. Soaring Perpendicular Gothic, so ornate on the outside, so simple on the inside and such glass! Every single window was stained, even the high ones where you need to zoom in with you camera to be sure that’s colour up there. The south aisle had windows full of yellow glass – this is a more recent innovation, which is why I’ve seen other cathedrals remark on it. Those turned proper gold with the midday sun coming straight through them. It was all incredible.

And then there’s the tower. It cost 6 euros to go up the South Tower and signs say “No lift. No joke”. It’s a lot of steps. It’s five hundred and something spiral stone stairs You get a brief respite at the belfry and then up you go again. When you think you’re there, there’s a metal staircase in the middle of a room and because they’re open, even though there’s only about ten of that going up and up, it’s somehow more terrifying than the 500+ stone stairs, and those were terrifying enough. There are windows on the south side, which help you keep track of how many circles you’ve done and lots of them have no glass in them. They’re less than six inches wide, you couldn’t fall out if you tried but it’s still scary that high up. At the very top, you walk around the top of the tower. It’s all confined by fences and wire and all the usual but it’s very high. It wasn’t until I got home that I discovered it’s the highest double-spire church in the world and the third-highest church of any kind. I climbed that!

Back down, I now took some time to explore the markets. I got a cup of hot chocolate in the old-fashioned market and discovered there are at least three variants of that dark red round mug. I wandered down almost to the river through medieval streets that were deserted – leave the markets behind and there’s no one else in the city. I found a Catholic church with an overly large and ornate tower on an otherwise fairly non-descript church. I bought some things. I searched the city for a cloth badge, preferably with the towers on and found no such thing.

By now it was getting cold. A thick mist had descended and if you climbed the towers now, you wouldn’t even get a view for your efforts. It was cold. I took shelter inside the cathedral but who’d have thought: a massive stone medieval building is not warm! It was somewhere to sit down – my feet were tired, especilly after the long climb – but it wasn’t warm. No, for warmth I resorted to Burger King inside the Hauptbahnhof which is right next door and also where my train departed from. No time spent faffing around trying to figure out how to get back to Messe station. But I still had two hours to kill before I could use that non-flexible “cheap” train ticket. There’s nowhere really warm in Cologne Hbf. Cold air drifts down from hundreds of tracks above and it’s open at front and back. I popped into shops. I contemplated blue ceramic doorknobs and white boots like lace-up wellies and explored German scifi and fantasy books. Helpfully, when you buy a train ticket from a DB machine, you can print out your timetable. It’s useful to know exactly which train you’re allowed to get on but it’s really useful that it tells you the platforms. 4 A, B and C.

It was delayed! Only by about 10 minutes but the result was that the 18:27 to Frankfurt left before the 18:18 arrived and I couldn’t get on it. It was at platform 4 D-G which is normally fine but as it was still sitting there when my train was approaching, we had to move to platform 5. It was reasonably quiet. I guess anyone whose tickets had flexibility jumped on the 18:27.

I think we got into Frankfurt at 19:41 which meant home by 8. Quite a long day and the one with the most exercise. So I didn’t write my blog and I didn’t do my Finnish lesson either.