In the summer of 2023, after our week in Helsinki, we arrived in Berlin for the second leg of our trip. Having done a fantastic job of selling Berlin to the rest of the family after my trip to the city in 2022, they were all really keen on going there. I fancied Copenhagen myself, but we’ll save that for another year!
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While for most of our Helsinki trip, I was getting about using City Bike bike share, I did get opportunity to sample most of the city’s other modes of transport while we were there.
Continue reading “Helsinki 23: Public Transport in Helsinki”
Once we arranged our trip to Helsinki, being as my partner is a librarian, a visit to Helsinki’s fantastic Central Library, Oodi was high on the itinerary. Opened in 2018 and located in Kluuvi district near Helsinki Central Station, Oodi has become a landmark building in the city.
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During our 2023 trip to Helsinki, we were lucky enough to get a guided tour of the fantastic Alvar Aalto designed National Pensions Institute. Guided tours happen every Monday at 2pm. These are free, but you do have to book in advance. Our friends had planned ahead and booked us on the tour during our visit, which I was very pleased about.
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During our visit to Helsinki in 2023, like many tourists, we arranged to do a boat trip over to Suomenlinna (named Viapori in Finnish up until 1918, or Sveaborg in Swedish), the sea fortress off the coast of Helsinki.
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While in Helsinki during our 2023 visit, I was keen to try some of the best examples of cycling infrastructure in the city, making use of the City Bikes bike share to get about. One such example is Baana, an old railway cutting that was once part of the harbour railway, since converted into a 1.3 km walking and cycling path, back in 2012.
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In something of a change from the usual Netherlands, in 2023 we arranged a two leg trip to to the Finnish and German capitals, Helsinki and Berlin for our summer holiday. We chose Helsinki as we have friends who moved there a couple of years ago and we were keen to visit them.
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Our trip to Bath really wouldn’t have been complete without a ride along the famous Bristol and Bath Railway Path. The history of this trailblazing traffic-free route is very much tied up with the history of Sustrans, who initially developed it back in 1979 and active travel campaigning in the UK.
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The Bath Two Tunnels Greenway wasn’t something we knew about before arriving in Bath. It was thanks to a couple of helpful suggestions on Twitter that we came to find out about it. On reading more about the route, it sounded perfect for us and wasn’t too far from where we were staying.
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At the end of May 2023, we travelled down to Somerset, to spend a week in a lodge on the outskirts of Bath at the Bath Mill Lodge Retreat. We had been due to stay in Bristol at the same time of year in 2022, but ended up cancelling, after I somewhat foolishly broke my foot skateboarding 🤦
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Dom Cycling 