TacoCat’s Travels (Finland) #23: Roller Coastin' 🎢

Hey Steemit!

I know it's been a loooong time since the last travel post where I talked about hanami in Finland. I just wanted to say thank you so much to all those who read, curated, upvoted and resteemed it! I'm blown away by how many votes it got and I'm so glad people actually enjoy what I'm sharing on here. 😊

Anyway, I posted a teaser in the previous post which was actually just the first half of the day, so here's the exciting continuation!

19 May 2018. Saturday.

(Sidenote: dang I really should update more because I'm now a year behind! That's insane!)

So I had previously read about an amusement park in Helsinki during my google searches, and it was actually not too far away from Roihuvuoren, the park where the hanami event was taking place that we visited. Since the event didn't take too much time out of our day, we decided to head over to Linnanmäki to check it out!

A lot of typical amusement parks require an entry free but the great thing about Linnanmäki is that it's completely free to enter! 😄 I later read that it is owned by a non-profit organisation called Lasten Päivän Säätiö (Children's Day Foundation), which operates the park in order to raise funds to Finnish child welfare work. In 2017, the foundation donated a total of 4.5 million euros! That's awesome! I'm so glad the government allowed this amusement park to be built; it's win-win, for the visitors and for the beneficiaries! 😃

The park itself has quite a few different rides, mainly catered to children. It also has other attractions, such as arcades, games, kiosks, restaurants and an outdoor stage on which different performers appear in the summer. The rides are pay-to-ride, so as opposed to a flat entrance fee with unlimited rides, you'll need to pay for each time you ride here. It's not too expensive though, if you just take the rides once.

There are many different game 'stalls' similar to those you'd find in a carnival
Various marine life attractions. I'm not sure how the performances are, but after studying about unethical marine life attractions I decided to boycott them altogether.
There are also many restaurants and food courts. The food smelled good too! 🤤 But since we were gonna ride the roller coaster we decided not to get food first.

I'm kind of an adrenaline junkie, so I was looking forward to riding the roller coaster after chillin' in cushy Mikkeli for so long. But we also didn't want to spend too much money, so we decided to just go for the most exciting one.

There was this ride that rotated 360 degrees over the water! And the classic drop ride
There were quite a few 'kiddy' rides like this one, since it is mainly catered to children.
Probably one of the lamer rides tbh. #sorrynotsorry
I guess the 'kiddy' rides are also elderly friendly, so grandparents can take the rides with the kids too. That's nice.
There was a carousel too, and some other roller coaster on the right. The high yellow one is the one we finally decided on, since it was the one that caught our eye on the way here too.
We also considered this orange one, but it just seemed like a smaller version of the yellow ride.
This is the ride we took in its entirety. That 90 degree incline tho. 😲

So we made the mistake of paying for lockers to put our stuff before taking the ride because we thought we had to. There are actually cubby holes at the ride itself for you to put down your things before going on the ride, so don't bother with the lockers. You also have to pay every time you open the locker, so damn.

Us after riding the roller coaster, smiling while listening to the people screaming up there. 😂 I like how the structure looks like a heart. This is what the ride is like! It's actually quite scary when you're upside down, and I was gripping onto the bar for dear life. 😨

Well that was fun. After that we got hungry so we went back to the main part of Helsinki and grabbed a bite to eat at Friends&Brgrs!

I believe we bought a beef and mushroom burger or something like that. It was really yummy! 😋

After that delicious meal, we bought an ice cream cone for dessert and took a walk around Helsinki.

Enjoying the sun while strolling through Helsinki
We saw that there was a Barbie exhibition going on in the National Museum of Finland, but we were too late to visit it. Even though it's pretty bright out it was actually close to 6 PM!
The building itself is pretty grand though.
I think this must be an iconic shot for tourists to take
The Parliament House is also very grand, and definitely makes for some good pictures! 😊
We found a tree with many pretty flowers nearby, and joked that this tree had more flowers than the entire hanami event. 😂

What a long day. After all that walking we got pretty tired so we had a quick dinner at a chinese restaurant near our Airbnb called CHINA, before going back to rest.

That's all for today! We were heading back to Mikkeli the next day so all we did was eat brunch before taking the bus back, since we had class on Monday. Nothing much to post about so I might skip that day.

Thanks so much for reading!

To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!

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Check out my previous post in this series!
TacoCat’s Travels (Finland) #22: Sakura in Finland!