The week before I went to Helsinki, I saw that line as the title of a piece about Iceland, which is actually about Hvammsvik Hot Springs, which I discovered in February and adore. But with plans to go to Helsinki just four days away, the phrase “holistic & healing” jumped right out at me. I had my eye on saunas and sea pools and wooded islands and enough sunshine to be pleasant but not so much as to make me feel sticky. A city break may not immediately jump out at you as a wellness destination but I realised that was exactly what I was hoping for.
I kind of needed it. I’d brought some kind of disease back from Paris (again!) and at the time I screenshotted that headline on the Tuesday for future reference, I’d had next to no voice for eleven days. As I was planning to vlog this trip, I was hoping to have my voice back by Friday so I could film my intro but definitely by Saturday. We also had a huge chunk of research and a very short deadline at work, and I was juggling brand new Rangers, my Going Away With licence, 30 Brownies and boat club. Some wellness, healing and holisticness was exactly what I was after.
However, nothing with any connection to any kind of wellness should begin with a 2am alarm and a drive through the night to Heathrow (where a misinterpretation of the satnav led me – utterly inescapably – to the staff car park. Honestly, I’m not sure I ever quite shook that one off. That was Saturday morning, just about, and maybe by Tuesday I was feeling enough like myself to go out all day. Never again. It’s not worth it. Next time I have no other option but a 7.30 flight, I’m going up to Heathrow the afternoon before, staying in a hotel and getting up at 5am instead.
But extreme tiredness aside, Helsinki is indeed the wellness city break of your dreams. I remembered branding Helsinki “the jewel of the Baltic” and I was absolutely right. Its sparkle was even brighter under a blue sky and sunshine, although there’s just enough bite in the air that I was never uncomfortably hot. Indeed, it was never hot enough that I left the apartment without a jumper, which I probably wore more than I carried. Perfect weather for a polar bear looking for a lovely spring/summer weekend, though. Everything I dreamed of.
Besides the weather, Helsinki is a relatively small and quiet city. It never felt overrun with tourists, the way Reykjavik or Paris do. It’s fairly quiet, the streets are cobbled, the buildings are either neoclassical or Art Nouveau and it’s just nice. I stayed in an aparthotel in the Kamppi district, a couple of streets away from the central station and that was perfect. Quiet, but with dusty parks full of trees on the corner, endless small quiet eateries, wine bars and pavement cafes. This is what Paris should be like. Finland is really into its coffee. The numbers vary hugely but pretty much everyone agrees that there is no country in the entire world that drinks more coffee than Finland. As a result, there are plenty of cafes and so you can sit and watch the world go by with a cup of coffee and a pastry. To finish the Paris comparison, there’s no shortage of croissants in Helsinki but the national pastry here is the korvapuusti, a cinnamon roll twice the size of the ones you get anywhere else and sprinkled with pearl sugar.
So you’ve got your sunshine, your cobbled streets and your pavement cafes. Then there’s the geothermal pool floating in the South Harbour. That’s getting its own post so I’ll talk more about that later but is there anything more wellness than an open-air heated pool? Actually, the pool wasn’t as warm as I’d have liked so I retreated to the sauna to warm up after my dip. That was effective, and it has a perfect herbal smell as well. If the water had been warmer and I hadn’t gone right at the end of the day, I could have lingered there for ages, watching the sun go down over the Baltic while relaxing in my warm pool but alas, it closes at 9, which means you have to be out of the water by 8.40 and the water wasn’t that warm anyway.
And then there’s the sauna. Finland invented the sauna so you really should give it a go. Yes, I know I just went in the sauna at Allas but Helsinki has a large public seafront sauna complex. Finding a public sauna was more difficult than I expected. Everyone saunas but they have them in their apartment blocks or at work or in cabins on secret islands, so I was glad to find Löyly. It has an inside sauna, a traditional smoke sauna accessed from the deck and a small private sauna which you can hire out. Then it has direct access to the Baltic for the cooling-off part of the procedure. I don’t know how it compares to an authentic sauna as used by an actual Finn but it was definitely different to the saunas I’ve been in at spas in the UK and in Iceland. I had a sauna cover to sit on and when you pour water on the rocks, you can feel the temperature increase by about ten degrees. Did I say “what’s more wellness than a pool?” Well, the answer is a proper Finnish sauna. A proper Finnish sauna followed by a korvapuusti outside on the deck overlooking the sea.
Even public transport feels holistic and healing. There is a metro but it’s more for the greater Helsinki area than the city centre, which is entirely ruled by trams. The trams are quiet, they’re rarely too busy to find a seat and they just feel gentle and unobtrusive compared to the buses and metro trains that I rushed around Paris on last month. The ferry over to Suomenlinna is included in public transport region A so I went over to the islands two evenings and just wandered around. Perhaps there are other islands that feel more peaceful and natural than a fortress turned UNESCO World Heritage site but it’s pretty peaceful, all the buildings are now cafes which close at 5pm and after strolling, sketching and looking at the city skyline, you get to chug back across the bay as the sun starts to set.
Yes, all in all Helsinki was probably the most chilled city break I’ve ever had. It’s a wellness destination disguised as a capital city and you don’t have to pay for the all-inclusive spa week when you can stay wherever your budget allows and get out and about while you’re enjoying the wellness. I came back a little less tired, with a little more voice and I can feel my eyes glow every time anyone asks how it was, as I reply “Oh, it was just lovely.”