Churches, Parks & Saunas: What To Do In Helsinki If You Only Have One Day

From Stockholm, I flew on to Helsinki, the final of my Nordic capitals to visit. I’ve got to admit I wasn’t expecting a lot from Helsinki, which may have contributed to my decision to arrive later and cut down my time in the city to basically one day.

The good thing is, there wasn’t a whole lot I wanted to do in Helsinki. A unique church inside a rock? Check. A Finnish sauna? Check. Anything else? A bonus.

Although I arrived the evening before, I also left early evening the following day, so I barely had 24 hours in Helsinki. However, I came up with a pretty solid itinerary that ended up working out VERY well, so although I didn’t have a lot of time, and also skipped one of Helsinki’s main attractions, I wanted to share it with you.

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Here’s everything I did in one day in Helsinki:
📌 check out the cathedral
📌 walk up to Sibelius park to see the Sibelius sculpture
📌 brunch/late breakfast at the Regatta Café
📌 stop at Temppeliaukio rock church on the way back to the city centre
📌 grab lunch at Vanha Kauppahalli market
📌 spend the afternoon in a Finnish sauna
📌 if time, visit the National Library (I did this before hopping on a tram to the ferry)

Helsinki Cathedral

Helsinki’s most famous landmark, the cathedral is the one “unmissable” sight. I went to see the cathedral a couple of times during my visit, but unfortunately the whole tower was in scaffolding with a picture on, which didn’t have quite the same effect. I walked to it in the evening as part of my quest to find food, and then caught a tram the following day from next to the cathedral, so I saw it at night and during the day.

Sibelius Park & monument

In the morning, my first port of call was Sibelius Park. The park is in the opposite direction to most of the things I had planned, so I thought I’d do it first, for a couple of reasons.

I decided to walk up to Sibelius park, as with such little time in the city, I thought it would be nice to check out a larger area of it by way of walking to somewhere half an hour out of the centre. I’d read one blog that said they regretted walking and got a taxi back, but to be honest I didn’t mind. What I DID mind was reaching the park and finding I couldn’t enter it until much further up, which meant walking along the main road for a lot longer. The whole thing was closed off by a barrier apart from the main entrance by the Sibelius monument, which was strange.

Anyway, the Sibelius monument… does not look like much, and you might wonder why I walked all the way here. It’s actually really fun to get some creative photos, so that was my main reason!

The park is also really nice and backs onto some water with lots of islands. On a sunny day, it was absolutely beautiful!

The only thing is, there were endless coach groups turning up, which really surprised me. I didn’t think Helsinki was a big cruise destination, but both the park, and the church I went to afterwards, were packed with coach groups. I seemed to be following their route, so it might be worth considering doing these the other way around, or maybe it would make no difference. OR, maybe I was just unlucky and it was a particularly busy day!

Anyway, a few people were milling around underneath the Sibelius monument, and I joined them as I wanted to get those really cool shots from below the pipes. After a couple of minutes, a woman comes over and barks at me, something about getting a photo. I thought she meant she wanted me to take a photo of her, so I followed her out. Realising I’d misunderstood, I said, “oh I thought you meant you wanted a photo of you with it.” She looks at me angrily and goes, “no, I wanted you out of the way.” I couldn’t believe it!

Ash will tell you how annoyed I get when there’s a great shot and someone suddenly walks into it. Waiting for the perfect moment can be frustrating, and from the other side I always make sure to leap out of other people’s shots if I see them taking a photo. I’ve literally started running before, to get behind people so they can get an empty shot before someone else appears. This is the first time ever that I’d deliberately decided to stand in the way, to do something creative, in an already crowded public place. Meanwhile I constantly have to wait while people take up entire views to do a self-absorbed full-blown photoshoot. And this bitch chooses to have a go at ME?! I hope you got an awful photo.

Sorry, that’s my rant over. Positivity resumes…

Breakfast at Regatta Café

I’d kept reading recommendations for the Regatta Café, and as it’s in the park, it was another excuse to head up there.

It’s by the water too, so it was lovely to sit down with some nice views in a peaceful park.

The café itself is just in a wooden hut, but most of the seating is outdoors so it was perfect on a lovely day. There’s a firepit area and it just feels really rustic and charming.

Honestly, I was wondering whether I would regret coming to the park over Suomenlinna, but I didn’t have much interest in heading over to the fortress island. I didn’t want to go for the sake of it being popular, even though I’m sure it’s great.

It’s hard to have regrets when I’m sitting by the water with a pastry and a cup of tea, feeling completely content.

Eventually, though, I needed to move on and head back into the city centre.

Read more: Discovering The Incredible Metro Station Art In Stockholm

Temppeliaukio rock church

About half way between the city centre and the park is an interesting church that was probably actually top of my list of things to do in Helsinki, and another reason for deciding to walk to the park.

You see, it’s no ordinary church. It’s inside a massive rock, and the ceiling is a huge copper dome!

It’s genuinely the most unique church I’ve EVER been to!

It doesn’t look like much from the outside but it is well worth the entry fee, and I stuck around for a while to wait for coach groups to clear so I could get better photos. It seemed like it was going to be really busy when I was outside, but luckily it wasn’t too bad.

What an absolutely amazing place!

It even plays host to concerts and events as apparently the acoustics are fantastic – wouldn’t that be an incredible venue to go to a concert?!

Opposite the rock church is a shop titled “Santa’s Minimarket” which I took a photo of. Turns out – it’s an actual Christmas shop! Finland is of course home of Lapland, so you can’t get much more “authentic” than Santa’s home country. I also chatted to the owner as they had a poodle who looked exactly like my parents’ old dog.

Vanha Kauppahalli market for lunch

So, I do recommend Vanha Kauppahalli for lunch, but I’ll let you into a secret despite my recommendation: I didn’t eat anything there.

This is the old market hall, opened in 1889 next to Helsinki’s vibrant harbour, and it’s brilliant for a look around, but unless you like fish and seafood, which I’m not a huge fan of, then it might not be the best place for you.

It does also feel quite touristy, with things like tinned elk and reindeer meat, and even bear salami.

So yes, Vanha Kauppahalli is worth a visit regardless, but with a caveat.

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Spend the afternoon in a Finnish sauna

There are a ton of saunas in Helsinki, as is the Finnish way. Saunas are serious business in Finland, and so ingrained in their culture that it was the one thing I definitely needed to do while I was there. The two I was trying to decide between were Loyly and Allas Sea Pools.

Loyly is a large complex down by the ferry terminals, so I thought this might be the better option as I’d be getting a ferry afterwards. But actually the way that the inlets are between Loyly and the terminal, it would take just as long as coming from Allas.

Allas Sea Pools are right in the centre, the other side of the harbour along from the market, and they’re a bit cheaper than Loyly. In fact, I made it there before 2pm, which meant I got the weekday rate of 18€. After 2pm on a Friday, it goes up to 22€ for the weekend.

This also turned out to be a pretty big complex, but felt less scary as a solo traveller who gets major anxiety visiting places like this on my own.

But I did it. “Feel the fear and do it anyway” and all that. I navigated the changing rooms and found the main sauna. It was great. I mostly went into the large mixed sauna, which I found more comfortable as you knew you weren’t expected to be naked when there are men and women!

I did also check out a female-only sauna down on the deck, where people were naked. But others also weren’t, so I didn’t feel like I was committing a faux pas by being a very reserved Brit.

(It goes without saying that you shouldn’t really take photos, but I kept my phone in my towel bag and took a quick photo when I was in this sauna on my own!)

Between saunas, I used the pools to cool down. There were two swimming pools as well as the actual sea pool. I did dip my feet into the sea pool, but didn’t pluck up the courage to go fully immersed!

There are also bars on site, so a lot of people were getting drinks and sitting on the loungers on the deck. There was a real relaxed atmosphere and there seemed to be a mix of tourists and locals there, which was nice.

I had a note to get to Allas by 3pm at the latest – but I actually got there before 1.30pm, so I had loads of time. This worked out perfectly as I sat on the terrace afterwards with a drink and enjoyed the views for the rest of my time in Helsinki.

Or most of it, anyway. I had one more thing on my list.

Bonus stop: National Library Of Finland

I needed to walk over to the cathedral to hop on a tram to the ferry port, so before saying goodbye to the city, I decided to head into the National Library just opposite the cathedral, which I’d heard was very beautiful.

Very beautiful is an understatement.

JUST LOOK AT THIS!

Outside of the main room, even the side rooms look really cool.

It’s worth noting that you cannot take any bags into the library, and you have to use a (free) locker before you go in from the foyer. I did put my main bag away and then asked if I could take just my small camera bag, and he said that’s fine. But I couldn’t even take my small cross-body bag in.

The quirky side of Helsinki

I almost forgot to mention all the weird stuff I managed to see in Helsinki. I swear I have an inbuilt magnet for quirky things!

Here’s a photo dump of weird stuff from my phone:

We have:

• The aforementioned Santa’s Minimarket, plus a gymanstic Santa snow globe that was for sale there.
• An absolutely giant seagull head, which I think was part of an art museum. Of course.
• A tank??????????
• A tortoise at the bottom of a sign post
• An unhinged dog pee sign
• A shop called Your Face
• Bastard Burgers – I really wish I’d been able to eat here!
• And the final photo I took in Helsinki – the sign to get on the ferry. TILL FARTYGET!

Related: Photo Friday: Weird & Quirky Sights Around Riga

To be quite honest, I didn’t feel like I really missed anything on my brief trip to Helsinki. The only other thing on my “maybe” list was checking out Huvilakatu Street, known as the prettiest street in Helsinki. I didn’t really feel any need to walk there, especially as I’d be going out of my way for it, and Helsinki overall had been way prettier than I’d been expecting, so it didn’t feel like finding a nice street that matches the standards of most European cities was worth doing.

I even managed to get a great view of Uspenski Cathedral, despite not making any plans to go there.

Like I said before, I also missed one of Helsinki’s most popular attractions, Suomenlinna. Helsinki is surrounded by islands, and several of them make up this historic fortress. I can’t really pinpoint why I wasn’t bothered about visiting, but I also wouldn’t have swapped out anything from my day for it.

The only thing that I almost messed up on was dinner when I arrived. I walked to my hostel to check in, dropped my bags, and went to head back out to a place I’d passed called Bastard Burgers (I think I saw one of these in Oslo, too!). I checked what time it was closing and realised my mistake – it was closing in 15 minutes. Along with every other restaurant in Helsinki. It appeared that basically NOTHING was open after 10pm on a weekday!

I decided it would be best to go for a wander, and eventually found a Mexican place that would be closing at 11, so I only just made it in time. I never even found any takeaway joints.

Anyway, I think if I’d gone the other way, through the Kamppi district I was staying on the edge of, there would have been a few more options; instead, all I found open on my walk were bars. It took me by surprise, as I hadn’t thought to plan ahead, to be honest! It’s a capital city, after all.

Apart from that, I really enjoyed Helsinki. It makes for a lovely little city break with some unique cultural attractions and experiences, and I got really lucky with the weather too. And as you can see, it’s definitely easy to spend much more than just a day there. But a day worked out perfectly for me.

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