As we started dragging down the bags into that old elevator, I was wanting to tell the folks to call for a taxi and get us to the ferry terminal. From what we see just now near the royal palace, where the ship's docked seemed very far away.
Alas, my dad think the weather is good and decided that we should really stretch our feet a little. You know, that exercise do you a lot of good theory.
That small little exercise turns out to be more like a 35min long drag, with so much cars and buses, truck passing us by stirring so much dust from the nearby construction. *Cough*Anyways, we quickly went redeemed our ticket from the terminal counters. There were already many people hanging around the lobby waiting to get into the Viking ship. Apart from Viking, there were few others ship docked here too, going places like Turku, Mariehem, Estonia or so.
Getting to Helsinki via the overnight ferry is really more like an excuse to buy booze. Seeing in both Norway and Stockholm both have heavy taxes on alcoholic drink, cruise operators like Viking strikes the idea to sell tax free liquors on board to attract people to come travel with them. It is not just here, more like a whole Europe thing really.
But we had fun here really, from listening people singing their type of Russian tune in the Karaoke, be fed with local popular fare, admiring the islands that pass our window non stop whole night, up till figuring out how to lower down the upper bunk bed in our room. Not so different with our Star Cruise, but packed with loads more local flavor definitely!
Roast Pork, Pan fried salmon, very good sausages, Spanish seafood paella (taste strange, my mom say its Chinese fried rice), Smoke salmon hiding behind, some creamy potatoes
Boiled rice (how odd!), Smoke salmon, cold meat cuts, stirr fry veg, shrimp salad, and that thing with inside the bread is liver pate.
More cold cuts - Comprises of mostly raw fish, smoke salmon, vinaigrette mackerels, small mussel salad
The next day, I woke up to a really old looking light house. This straight away took my thoughts far far away, remembering there was this tale that a light house caretaker struggle the great storm to make sure the light house's fire was not put off, as there was a ship carrying someone sick and needed to dock urgently. The light house must've look like this : small, with bright lights in the night, together with its caretaker living a lonely isolated life... alas!
We quickly ate breakfast, and this morning again our breakfast was taken cared off. Large variety of breakfast to choose from, various bacon streaks, hams, cheese, salmon again, bread, smörg bread (cracker looking biscuit). Knowing ourselves being surrounded with more expensive spending ahead, my mom even decided to pack sandwiches for lunch, erm, and the cheese, and sausages, as well as uncountable number of Swedish meatballs. Yum!
Breakfast at Mariella - Very good variety of bread loafs, with smoke salmon and cold cut again.
Typical Scandinavian breakfast? Or issit Finnish breakfast? Swedish meatballs, sausage, pan friend cubed ham, egg salad, savory bland pancakes. That thing in the middle is a badly flatten potato that is bake till too dry.
Finally we docked, ran up to the upper deck took few pictures of the surrounding.
Then we packed our stuffs and left the Mariella with a gloomy day ahead of us... but hey, Welcome to Helsinki!
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