In September & October 2015, I traveled to Northern Europe & the Baltics. After a day in New York City, I traveled to Glasgow, Scotland to visit friends for a few days, then went to Copenhagen, Denmark via London. From Copenhagen, I flew to Riga, Latvia on Norwegian Airlines, then went from Riga to Tallinn, […]
After visiting the Finnair lounge in Helsinki, it was finally time to start making my way home. My first flight of a long day was between Helsinki and London Heathrow. The sun was rising as I boarded the Airbus A321, treating me to this view. I was sitting in seat 1D (One Direction fans will […]
My time in Europe was over, at least for this trip. I was leaving on an early morning flight from Helsinki airport. Thankfully, the public transportation system was running that early. How early was it? So early that I had a private subway ride from the station near my hotel all the way to the […]
Finland has a strong beer scene, which isn’t surprising since it’s a good place to stay inside & drink for much of the year. Helsinki is filled with fantastic craft beer bars featuring local Finnish beers, as well as breweries from all over the world. While it’s not a huge city, it has a disproportionately high […]
The southern coast of Finland is dotted with thousands of islands. The islands range from small rocks in the sea to larger entities that hold entire towns. Among these larger islands in Helsinki’s harbor is Suomenlinna, which, due to its location, became the home of a large sea fortress in the 18th century. The name Suomenlinna translates […]
Heading to Helsinki, my perception was that the city was fairly large. Perhaps it’s due to my relative familiarity with Finland as a whole compared to other places I hadn’t yet traveled to, including knowing about Finnish stars of sports such as hockey & F1, some familiarity with Finnish technology such as Nokia and Rovio (makers of […]
Whenever I travel and only have a few days in the city, I usually try to stay as close to the city center as possible. For a couple of reasons, I made a slight exception when I visited Helsinki. First, IHG’s Point Breaks promotion was including a Holiday Inn property in West Ruoholahti, an area […]
The easiest way to travel between Tallinn, Estonia & Helsinki, Finland is by ferry, at least for now. There are proposals to build a tunnel between the two nations, but that would take an remarkable engineering feat and many years of construction. Estonia & Finland do have close ties even without a tunnel, so a couple […]
IHG has released their list of PointBreaks hotels for the next 3 months. Starting on Monday, January 24th, you can book the following list of hotels for just 5,000 IHG Rewards Club points for stays between January 25th, 2016 and April 30th, 2016. PointBreaks represent the best redemption values for IHG properties.Given that you can […]
Turkish Airlines Flight 1425 from Istanbul, Turkey to Helsinki, Finland was presumably uneventful tonight, right up until the last few feet of the journey. The issue? Those last few feet were excessive, as the Airbus A320 went too far and crashed into the jet bridge. Passenger & travel blogger Jonathan Khoo was on-board the plane & live-tweeted […]
