Travels with Spaniels: Helsinki, booze cruises and dog parks

For the Travels with Spaniels team, the most exciting thing about Helsinki has to be that it has 141 dog parks. The spaniel vote may be skewing the statistics here, but it is nice to feel that the needs of canine residents and visitors are being catered to. This morning's walk was a particularly good example, as Hertoniemi, where we spent the night, has separate parks for large and small dogs, and a dog beach, all safely fenced off. From the land side at least. Max made a bid to swim out to sea after some ducks, but they had the sense to fly off and he was persuaded to return. He had already disgraced himself once by falling off a low harbour wall trying to cut inside Nick, and needing to be fished out by his harness.

The market hall in Kuopio

We arrived in Helsinki at lunchtime on Friday, having spent the previous couple of days travelling slowly down from Kuopio. After a night parked at Kuopio tower, with its fabulous views of lakes and islands, we went to explore the town. It was very pedestrian friendly, and offered a pleasant stroll along the lakeside and into the market square. The market hall was a wonderful art nouveau concoction, covered in carved animals and full of stalls selling everything from the traditional baked pastries (fish and pork anyone?) to flowers, fruit and meat. Outside the stalls were mostly selling seasonal produce, especially berries and mushrooms. I was picking those same berries wild a week or two ago, but we are definitely planning to buy some mushrooms when we get to Estonia. Neither of us has the confidence to pick them from the wild.

Beautiful specimens, but we won't be eating these!

Elsa takes on the role of cox

Out of town shopping centres gave us the chance to stock up on a few supplies and get some washing done in a super fast laundrette, before getting some miles under our fan belt.
We travelled slightly cross country to get away from the main roads, and were rewarded with a wonderful parking space in the forest all to ourselves. Rain prevented another camp fire, but the morning dawned fine, and the spaniels were able to have a good run off the lead. Much amusement was had from the discovery of a small hand ferry, and we couldn't resist the opportunity to cross the lake for no good reason, and return again almost immediately.

We had one other overnight stop before Helsinki, a small car park on the outskirts of Lahti, where we retreated from the rain to do some cleaning and some family history research. From there it was little more than hour to Helsinki's Olympic Park.

Next to the Olympic Park was a large car park which was free for four hours. Enough time to jump on a tram for a journey through the elegant art nouveau centre of the city, walk along some of the endless waterfront, admire the Lutheran and Orthodox cathedrals, and get into conversations about English Springer Spaniels. A young man on the tram had had one as a boy, but when he wanted to find one more recently he had discovered there were only four breeders in Finland, and in the end he had decided it was easier to get a Labrador. Another lady asked as she was leaving the tram if we were travelling with the dogs, and her parting shot was a sympathetic "That must be challenging!"

A walk along Helsinki's waterfront

Elsa is oblivious to the traffic at the dog park

We had arranged to meet Nick's nephew, who lives in Helsinki, and his girlfriend for an evening meal near their apartment in Hertoniemi, and found a great spot for the night in a nearby marina. We spent an enjoyable evening catching up over Nepalese food, and they joined us this morning for a walk with the dogs. After that it was back into the city, where the plan was to park Florence at the docks from which we'll be departing for Tallinn early tomorrow morning, and get the tram back into the city for the afternoon. Unfortunately the car park was full to overflowing, leaving us no choice but to hover around waiting for people to return from incoming ferries and collect their cars. In the end we perched on the end of a row, and an official from the port doing a drive-by told us we should be fine there, as he'd called the parking company several times to say the car park was full and it was causing delays for passengers. We decided to risk it, bought a ticket, and after a spot of lunch walked along another bit of waterfront to a dog park on a traffic island. A little surreal, but the spaniels didn't seem to mind.

Back from a booze cruise to Tallinn

By the time we returned spaces were starting to appear in the car park, and we were able to move into a bay, put the kettle on, and marvel at the quantities of alcohol that were being unloaded from sack trucks by day trippers returning from Tallinn. One couple had fifty litres of spirits, mostly vodka, in cases of ten half-litre bottles. Taxes on alcohol were increased in Estonia a couple of years ago, but it is evidently still sufficiently cheap to justify hundreds of Finns taking the ferry over to load up their booze cupboards. Further entertainment was provided by an unknown driver who had been less careful than us about choosing a spot outside the marked bays, and will return to find that three hefty lads in a white van have bounced his car several feet from where he left it. All good fun on a wet afternoon in Helsinki.