TacoCat’s Travels (Finland) #28: Our final day in HEL!

Hey Steemit!

So the previous post was about our last few days in Mikkeli; a small town where we were staying and studying at Aalto University. And I ended it off with our final train journey back to Helsinki. This post will officially be the last post for this entire Finland series! Yay! 😄

30 June 2018. Saturday.

This was our final day in Finland! Our flight back to Singapore was scheduled for 23:55, so we had pretty much the whole day to go around and maybe do some last minute shopping in Helsinki.

As always, we started our day with a yummy breakfast spread, courtesy of Clarion Hotel!

Eggs, Bacon and Toast!

After stuffing ourselves with yummy breakfast food, we decided to take a walk around town.

We also saw an interesting and wholesome BK advertisement!

I don't want to get too political, but we definitely don't have these kinds of advertisements here in Singapore (unfortunately but understandably so).

So I previously posted about MAGNUM Singapore on my TrEats series, and we actually visited the MAGNUM store here in Helsinki too!

Similar to the Singapore store, you could create and customise your own MAGNUM ice cream right here!

There was also a really cozy-looking seating area for people to enjoy their sweet creations.

We were still pretty stuffed from breakfast, and since I don't really have a sweet tooth to begin with, we just took a look around and headed out.

Back onto the main street, we saw a huge crowd on the sidewalks along the main road, and saw the reason for the all the pride advertisements. There was a whole pride parade going on!

I've never seen a pride parade in real life before so it was a really cool experience! There was loud music playing and trucks with people singing and dancing, and a whole mass of people walking together in solidarity.

There were quite a few groups of students marching and holding banners in the crowd and they were chanting some stuff too, but it might've been in Finnish because I couldn't understand what they were saying.

Everyone was just so happy walking together and dancing/chanting, it was really heartwarming to see them all supporting something so positively.

It was a really looong parade of people! The entire street was closed for people to walk together!

We even saw a cat showing his support! 😅

We also saw a couple of fabulous people gorgeously dressed in drag! They all looked so great!

After walking around for a bit, we decided to seek refuge from the heat in the Hard Rock Cafe (and to use the restroom).

The toilet signs were kinda cool in Hard Rock, with lyrics from old-school songs on them.

After walking around somemore, we went to Suburritos for lunch!

After lunch, we continued walking along and found a bubble tea food truck! This was the first time we saw bubble tea in Finland so we decided to give it a try.

I forget what we bought exactly; I think it was a mixture of 2 flavours, but I remember it being kinda sweet. I think there wasn't an option for sugar levels.

We soon arrived at the main square near the Helsinki station, and there was another event there too!

We had no idea what this was about since it was all in Finnish. I think it might've been a food competition of some sort. But the important thing was there was free food!

There were quite a few food booths around with people queuing up for free food. It smelled good so we quickly went to get some too!

So we got our free sausage and ate it while watching the show.

After that we went to the station mall to walk around, and we found a game store!

They were advertising the new Mario Tennis game that was releasing soon on the Switch and I was so excited to play it!

We even saw Pink Ranger at the bowling alley!

I thought the design for this cafe was so cool and unique!

We went back out onto the street and decided to finally visit the orange bowl after passing by it so many times.

Turns out it was a chapel! And a really nice looking one at that. I couldn't take any pictures inside it out of respect. But it was really quiet and serene. We kinda just sat there and took a peaceful rest away from the hustle and bustle outside.

They even have really helpful people on staff if anyone needs any help or just someone to talk to. That's so nice! It definitely did feel like a safe space for people to be with their own thoughts, or talk them out with someone in private.

It was starting to get late (even though it was still really bright out; thanks summer weather), so we decided to grab some dinner!

Soon it was time for us to take the train back so we could get to the airport for check-in. But not before grabbing some soy fingers from Hesburger for a train snack!

This was the view from the train at 8:15 PM!

After packing up our stuff, we checked out of the hotel and started making our way to the airport at 9 PM.

I think Helsinki airport has one of the smoothest immigration checks I've been through. All you have to do is scan your boarding pass!

After going through security, we had quite a lot of time to kill so I decided to leave a memento.

shameless self-promotion 😅

This was the view at 10:18 PM! I'm still not used to how bright it is when it's so late!

The sun finally started to set at 10:35 PM! I'm so glad we got to catch one last stunning sunset before we left.

We saw this curious advertisement on the way to our gate. I believe it is also the first mandarin advertisement we saw in Finland.

We also came across this cool-looking forest!

I don't know who Ryan is, but I hope he finds his way out of Hel. 😅

Soon, it was the final call for our flight!

It's been a super fun 4 months here in Finland. We got to experience so many new things; living in below zero temperatures, walking across a frozen lake, a different style of curriculum, going on reindeer sleigh rides, visiting castles, cottages, theme parks, and many other landmarks. All the while making new friends along the way. It was truly an unforgettable experience, and I'm so glad we got to do it together.

Anyway, that's all for this Travel Finland series! I hope you enjoyed reading it, and stay tuned for my next Travel series; this time we're going even further back in time, to my first trip to Japan in 2015! I'm so excited to relive those memories again.

Thanks so much for following along, and sorry for the extra long post! 😄

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

---

Posted from my blog with SteemPress : http://tacocat.steemblogs.club/2019/09/25/tacocats-travels-finland-28-our-final-day-in-hel/

---

[//]:# (!steemitworldmap 60.168088 lat 24.930969 long d3scr)

Check out my previous post in this series!
TacoCat’s Travels (Finland) #27: Leaving Mikkeli