Just a little of personal story here. Back in 2022, a friend attended a summer academic programme at Aalto University which is located in Helsinki, Finland. I have been in touch with her and we have met personally at different parts of the world: Singapore and Germany.
That friend messaged me and suggested we meet in Helsinki this round. So I flew to Helsinki and met her in the center of Helsinki.
Back then both of us were on tight budget, we explored Helsinki like local students would do – a budget travel which won’t break our banks. In this specific post, you’ll find some budget locations we ventured in Helsinki.
I can’t promise this blog post suggest the low-cost travel at the high-cost city like Helsinki, but it’s just worth trying.
Where can I start my story? I arrived at Helsinki’s central railway station and my friend picked me up there.
Our first stop was Helsinki’s old market hall (Vanha Kauppahalli) which is a food-court complex nested in a historical building. As our budget is limited and food prices there was beyond our budget, we ended up just walking around and browsed what kind of food those stalls offered – not just local but also international hippy food like burritos and ramens.
We moved on to grab our burgers at Naughty BRGR which was a chic and rock-style pink-themed bar. My friend introduced this place to me as local students’ hangout.
Over our burgers we reminisced our old times in Singapore – we first got to know each other while we were exchangers at NUS in Singapore. It’s been nice for us to still keep in touch and meet each other in different parts of the world!
Then we took public transportation to Aalto Cafe which combines large collection of books with cosy cafe spaces. We had not ordered anything there (as always, we kept our budget in check). But seemed to me like it was a comfy place to sip a cup of coffee over a fine slice of cake and a book.
Then my friend took me to Helsinki’s Public Library where she got a nice view on the rooftop terrace.
Inside Library I noticed people do some work on their laptops in coaches and chairs all over the place. I just wondered what they were enthusiastically working on their devices about.
We chose Suomelinna Fortress as our last stop for the day. We needed to take a ferry to reach there which was a fun activity to do on a sunny day.
We did some wifies there, explored the fortress as long as we were not tired just yet. Then we stopped by at a fortress restaurant and dined like a king..
As it was the last stop, my friend did not spare any expenses (she insisted on that) to enjoy the moment.
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