Hello,
Our family will be in Helsinki for 8 days attending the World Gymnaestrada July 2015!! All events will be located in the Olympic Village area. We will be needing someplace to stay, thinking renting a house might be the best. Any suggestions. Also, ideas on what not to miss. We will then hopefully have another 2 weeks to travel to other places, perhaps Sweden and Norway.
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21 posts
You might want to consider taking, (after your event, and on your way to Stockholm), the newest and biggest Baltic ship, the Viking Grace, out of Turku (2 hours by train from Helsinki and most trains go right to the Turku harbor). The Viking Grace charges 49 Euros per cabin, regardless if there are 1 or 4 persons in it (if there is a mega star performing at the Vogue Club then it could be more). The ship has many fabulous restaurants in all price categories, and every night there is live entertainment in the many bars and the Vogue (night) Club. There is a spa on board but you need to make a reservation ahead of time since it is so popular. The Turku archipelago is beautiful. This ship has the largest duty free shop afloat anywhere. The Viking Grace departs every night at 20:55 (8:55 pm) and arrives in Stockholm at 6:30 the next morning.
Turku is the old capital of Finland and it has many interesting museums and historical sites to see, like the medieval Turku Castle, the Handicraft museum (like Sturbridge Village), Forum Marinum nautical museum, the Turku medieval Cathedral, etc.
If you want to stay overnight in Turku there is the m/s Bore ship, a hostel, (right next the harbor and the Castle) where you sleep in the actual ship's (renovated) cabins. The ship is permanently moored in the Aura river that bisects the city. Happy planning!
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Rick Steves' Europe
16893 posts
Hold out for the new edition of Rick Steves' Scandinavia guidebook, which should be in stores in March, 2015.