we dine in Helsinki

our flight was uneventful and the cab ride into town on Wednesday afternoon went smoothly.  we checked into our room at the Hotel Haven and that was just what we had found- a complete haven - wonderful room, lots of space and a couple of chairs as well as a desk... very very nice. 

so we did some planning for the next couple of days and scoped out some restaurants - making reservations at our first choice for Phil's birthday dinner and worked back from there. 

evening fell and we headed out for our first dinner in Finland to a traditional Kro (krog or kroe) which means "inn"-

here is what we found:

the blackboard menu for the Helsinki dinner- a special during the week of herring festival- which we happened to hit on by chance- it is the oldest running annual festival in Helsinki- and below our window table looked over the old food hall at the port...

I guess we should have been surprised to see the menu in Finnish, Swedish and Russian as well as English- and it is right next door-  as you can see from this reminder map of where we were traveling-

the food was good - house made bread and creamy butter, a New Zealand Pinot (in prep for our December trip) the excellent salmon starter and the fabulous duck course - the weakest link was the dessert but by then we were well sated.

 

we left the restaurant and took a short walk around the harbor and it was clear the festival was well under way as many of the boats were docked with counters fitted out in the sterns for selling wares during the daytime hours.

 

Finnish is pretty much "greek" to us- luckily for us they have most signs in Swedish as well and the herring guys all come from the Swedish part of Finland so some of this makes sense to Phil.

 

after our quick foray into the harbor area- we headed home to our haven at the Haven... happy for our luxurious and spacious room.

 

 

this is not our exact room - we had a bench at the end of the bed and two upholstered chairs but it was decorated the same way...