In the middle of the 18th century, on the outskirts of Helsinki, the construction of a defensive fortress was laid, which over time was built, completed and rebuilt over several centuries, having survived many wars, passing from hand to hand and protecting the borders of various states of Sweden, Russia and Finland.
Today the fortress has lost its military power and acquired historical value as a cultural heritage, as an example of military culture.
Getting to the islands (by the way, there are already four of them: Lansi-Mustasaari, Pikku-Mustasaari, Susisaari and Iso-Mustasaari. Although some on the Internet write that there are eight), especially in summer, does not present any problems. Ferries to the fortress leave every half hour - 5 € (round trip ticket, valid 12 hours + free card) and you are there. You can also take a water tram - 7 €. Yes, a little more expensive, but the tram will take you right to the beautiful place fortress - the Royal Gate.
We sail to the island by ferry and disembark at the main pier of the island of Iso Mustasaari. This means that we have to walk the entire blue route suggested in the information brochure.
The island of Iso-Mustasaari seemed to me not very interesting from the point of view of a tourist. The old barracks are located here, where people who work on the island now live. By the way, there is even a school, a kindergarten, a grocery store, a hostel "Suomenlinna", a library and a fitness center on the island, a whole cloud of rooms for conferences and various celebrations, galleries and art workshops. There are cafes and restaurants. And on the ferries running between the island and Helsinki, there are special places for one or two cars so that the inhabitants of the island do not feel isolated or deprived of the opportunity to have a car :)
"Vanille" is one of the few cafes open all year round in Suomenlinna
There is also old temple... Earlier, a long time ago, it was a Russian Orthodox, the Finns converted it and turned it into a Lutheran one. We went in, and ... left, taking a couple of pictures.
The green lawns of the island were empty, which is strange. Usually in such park places, here and there, you can always see either a couple in love, or mothers with children, or owners walking their four-legged friends. Only once did we see a large group of keen yogis :)
While we were wandering around the island of Iso-Mustasaari, the sun was shining and pleasing, but on Susissaari the weather began to deteriorate abruptly. A piercing wind rose and leaden clouds appeared far over the horizon. Lord, at least it didn't rain!
Susisaari Island, to which a snow-white bridge leads, can rightfully be considered the highlight of Suomenlinna Fortress. Here in the summer, in good sunny weather, you can spend the whole day and it will not be boring. We were not bored even in the cold. Yes, well, we didn’t lie on the beach, but we climbed the fortress walls and hills that turned out to be dugouts, explored the fortress bastions, fleeing the wind, studied the calibers of Russian cannons, looked into all the places where you can look and where you can hide from the wind.
In one of the dozen reviews I reviewed, before visiting the fortress, I read and even outlined (because she simply killed me with the depth of knowledge of military affairs) the following phrase "On some redoubts, you can go to the caponiers for the gun servants." Kapets, I don't even know such words! :) Maybe I have seen these redoubts and caponiers, but I will not be able to pinpoint them with my finger. Only if you guess :)
At first we didn't go to museums, and then it was too late. It started to rain, and we barely managed to run to a cozy cafe located in a lonely house on a hill in the magnificent Piper Park.
But the first thing we did was to visit the submarine museum on Susisaari.
Submarine Vesikko
Personally, for the first time in my life, I was on a submarine. Let it be small, let it be tiny, let it be old, but underwater! Just a fountain of emotions! 
Museum prices submarine "Vesikko"
I do not know how and how long you can hold out in a confined and highly confined space, knowing that you are under water. How can you even withstand the terrible neighborhood of a working mechanism and not be able to sleep peacefully. Divers, are they generally human?
Well, okay, I can admit that you can go down for some, (clarify) short, time under the water. I even admit that you can probably calmly lie down on those tiny beds. But how can you keep track of all the arrows on a hundred devices in this tin can ?!
Summer cafe Piper
As soon as we passed the route suggested by the organizers, it started to rain. At first I just sprinkled it, but then it just turned into a wall of water. The rain and lunchtime seemed to have conspired to meet in the Suomenlinna fortress. And we took the opportunity to look into a lonely house on the edge of Piper Park - the summer cafe "Piper"
Everyone was hiding from the rain, and people were packed inside like herrings in a barrel. Therefore, having made a good choice of Finnish soup - freshly brewed and hot (which was just wonderful, given our degree of icing), and not a very good choice of dessert - some kind of puff pastry in sugar (the cake looked beautiful and appetizing, but the taste was simple, without enthusiasm) and coffee (which neutralized the defeat of the biscuit): So what am I talking about? A! Having made a choice, we went out onto the veranda, found the only table that did not fall on raindrops and, in the company of the sparrows, enjoyed the Finnish rain and peace.
Although the fortress Suomenlinna and is one of the main attractions of Helsinki, not every tourist from Russia who comes to the capital of Finland visits it. Someone is limited to a view from the embankment, someone floats by on the Silja Line motor ship going to Stockholm. But in vain! It is a must to visit - at least out of respect for the history of your own country.
Swedish fortress
The dashingly twisted biography of the fortress should be started not even from its birth, but from a slightly earlier time. In 1703, Peter the Great founded St. Petersburg in the east of the Gulf of Finland, and, paraphrasing the classics, from this point we began to threaten the Swede. Not surprisingly, Sweden is thinking about retaliatory actions. We thought for a long time. During this time, Russia managed to win two wars against its formidable neighbor.
During the Northern War of 1700-1721, Helsingfors (future Helsinki) came under the control of the Russian army and burned to the ground. According to the Russian version - as a result of a fierce artillery duel between our fleet and the Swedish coastal artillery, according to the Swedish - it was burned by the retreating troops so that nothing would get to the enemy. According to the Peace of Nishtad in 1721, Peter I annexed only part of the Finnish lands (Ingermanlandia, Kegsholm district,). Helsingfors was returned to Sweden.
In the postwar years, the political life of Sweden consisted of the struggle of adherents of peaceful relations with Russia (party of "caps") and supporters of revenge (party of "hats"). The revenge-seekers prevailed, but during the Russian-Swedish war of 1741-1743 they again received a hat.
In August 1742, Russian ground forces under the command of Field Marshal P.P. Lasi with the assistance of a squadron under the command of Vice Admiral Z.D. Mishukov blocked Helsingfors and forced the Swedish army to surrender without a fight. Peace in Abo, concluded in 1743, was successful for Russia. The Baltic border continued to move towards Stockholm.
In 1747, the outstanding Swedish military engineer, artillery and fortification specialist Augustin Ehrensvärd ("hat" for political views) persuaded King Fredrik I to accept the plan to build new fortresses to oppose the Russian fleet in the Baltic (albeit in a truncated form and with a cut budget).
The construction of the fortress began on the group of islands, which represent a natural barrier of the Helsingforsky roadstead, the name of which is translated into Russian very romantic - "Wolf Skerries". She received the uncomplicated name Sveaborg (that is, "Swedish castle", "Swedish fortress"). However, almost immediately the locals began to pronounce the name with a Finnish accent - Viapori.
It was a real construction site of the century. Nothing of the kind in scale in the second half of the 18th century was built anywhere in Europe. Defensive structures were built by 6 thousand people. The main construction phase lasted for four decades, and minor improvements continued later. "Father Sveaborg" and the first commandant of the fortress, Count Ehrensvärd, did not live to see the completion of the construction. And although he died on the family estate, the count was reburied in the fortress. Ehrensvärd's tomb with a magnificent tombstone is one of the most photographed sights in Sveaborg.
Sveaborg, built on the most advanced French designs, received the proud nickname "Northern Gibraltar", which was supposed to symbolize its inaccessibility. A powerful military garrison was placed in the fortress, which turned Sveaborg into the second largest after locality Finland.
In 1806, 4600 people lived on the islands, and 4200 on the coast. The future of Helsinki was, by and large, a village, in which only in 1757 the first stone house appeared, which belonged to the commerce adviser Johann Sederholm. This is the very small two-story house on Senate Square, which is photographed by all tourists as soon as the cathedral and the monument to Alexander II are filmed.
In 1807, at a meeting of the Russian Emperor Alexander I with his French counterpart Napoleon Bonaparte in Tilsit, an agreement was reached that Russia could annex Finland to its territory. On February 9, 1808, Russian troops under the command of Infantry General Count FF Buxgewden crossed the border, and on February 18 they entered Helsingfors. Soon Sveaborg was under siege, remaining the only settlement in southern Finland that did not surrender.
The fortress housed about a third of all Swedish troops stationed in Finland: 7,500 soldiers and officers, 1,500 civilians, 354 convicts and six Russian prisoners of war; 110 warships, more than 2 thousand guns, 100 tons of gunpowder. The commandant of the fortress, Vice Admiral Karl-Olaf Kronstedt, commanded the defense.
Those besieging "northern Gibraltar" were fewer, they had only 59 cannons at their disposal, and they did not have huge reserves of gunpowder. But soon the commandant of the fortress signed a truce for a month, deciding at the end of this period to capitulate if he did not receive reinforcements from Stockholm. The messengers sent to Stockholm did not manage to reach their destination during this month.
On the third of May, Sveaborg capitulated. Again, we are dealing with two conflicting versions of the reasons for how this happened. According to the first, poorly trained Finnish peasant soldiers are to blame and the Swedish officers who did not want to die are to blame, the failure of most of the cannons, the quickly consumed gunpowder, the lack of food supplies in the fortress and the lack of experience in Kronstedt, who had previously won victories only at sea. The second version, which military historians call "golden gunpowder," is based on rumors that the Russian military command allegedly gave the commandant a large bribe. This fact has never been documented.
After the conclusion of the Peace of Friedrichsgam, according to which all of Finland passed to Russia, Vice-Admiral Kronstedt was made in Sweden almost the main culprit of the national catastrophe. He was sentenced to death penalty, but pardoned at the request of the Russian emperor. The vice-admiral retired, but refused to enlist in the Russian army, wore Swedish orders, but did not disdain to receive a Russian military pension, his son became a Finnish senator, and the relatives who remained in Sweden changed their names.
Russian fortress
After the Russian-Swedish war of 1808-1809, the Sveaborg fortress became Russian. The new owners did not begin to rename the "Swedish castle" in the Russian way. But the islands on which the fortress is located were renamed, although not immediately. At first, they used Swedish names, which were written with a Nizhny Novgorod accent.
The Finns, of course, pronounced all the names in their own way, so that each island had a whole bunch of names. Here are some examples: Gustavsvard (Gustav-Sverde), aka Kustaanmieka, aka Artillery; Stora-Ostersvarto (Sture-Ostersvart), aka Iso-Mustasaari, aka Commandant; Vargon (Vargen), aka Susisaari, aka Engineer.
Although Sveaborg soon hosted twice as many Russian soldiers as there had once been Swedish and Finnish soldiers, the island fortress began to slowly lose its importance, and the settlement on the coast acquired more and more importance. The reason for this was the announcement in 1812 of Helsingfors as the new capital of the newly formed Grand Duchy of Finland (within the Russian Empire). The former village at the fortress gradually began to turn into a city with a fortress on the outskirts of the sea.
By the way, in 1811 a son was born in the fortress in the family of the garrison doctor Grigory Belinsky, who received the name Vissarion at baptism.
The interval between the first and second siege of Sveaborg was almost half a century. In the summer of 1855, during the Crimean War (which, contrary to its name, was fought not only in the Black Sea), the Russian Baltic Fleet was blockaded in Sveaborg by the superior Anglo-French fleet.
On 28 July (from the point of view of the attackers) or 9 August (from the point of view of the defenders), shelling of the fortress began. The interim commandant of Sveaborg, Lieutenant General A.F. Sorokin, did not seem to need a French military pension and did not dream of a place in the House of Lords for his son, and therefore managed to organize the defense of the fortress remarkably.
For two days and two nights of constant bombing on the fortress and other islands near Helsingfors, more than 20 thousand shells were fired, "according to an approximate and most moderate estimate." In the Finnish capital, from where the shelling was clearly visible, panic began - residents feared that the enemy would start shooting at the city.
Despite the force of the bombing, the material damage inflicted on the fortress was negligible. The losses of the defenders amounted to 63 killed, about 200 wounded and shell-shocked. The enemy lost 33 people. After several days of calm, the Allied fleet left the Baltic Sea. English and French newspapers wrote that Helsingfors and the Sveaborg fortress were wiped off the face of the earth.
The next time the fortress became the arena of battles in the summer of 1906. This time there was no external enemy. The commandant of the fortress, General V.A.Layming, received information about the impending general uprising in the Baltic Fleet and gave the order to mine the approaches to the fortress. Some of the minelayers refused to obey the order.
There is, however, as always, another version. Since the times of Peter the Great, a sailor who stood watch in cold weather was entitled to a glass of vodka or compensation for its cost in money. For some reason, the sailors in the fortress did not get either one or the other, which caused discontent. One way or another, but the commandant gave a new order - to arrest the troublemakers.
And then an uprising broke out. The forces were divided approximately equally. The rebellion, to which the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Bolsheviks had a hand, was attended by about 2 thousand people who took possession of the islands of Aleksandrovsky, Artillery, Mikhailovsky and Inzhenerny. There were about the same number of servicemen faithful to the oath; they fortified themselves on the Commandant and Lagerniy Islands.
The mutiny was suppressed in two days. 28 organizers and most active participants were shot, more than a thousand were sentenced to different terms imprisonment or sent to prison companies. About 600 people died in the battle. In the Brezhnev era in the USSR, a feature film "Sveaborg" was shot about these events, of course, very far from a true depiction of history.
Finnish fortress
In 1918, shortly after the declaration of Finland's independence, the Sveaborg fortress was renamed Suomenlinna (Finnish fortress). For a short time, it housed a concentration camp, which included those who participated in the civil war in Finland on the side of the Reds. Of the 8,500 prisoners a year later, after the camp was closed, 7,500 were released. The rest were mowed down by hunger and infectious diseases.
After the closure of the Suomenlinna concentration camp, it becomes a military target and remains so until 1973, when it comes under the control of the civil administration and turns into one of the districts of Helsinki.
In 1991, the fortress was included in the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. True, the island of Piku-Mustasaari (Hospital) is still at the disposal of the Finnish army. There is another attraction near Suomenlinna, which, alas, cannot be visited for the same reason.
On the island of Sandhamn - Santakhamina - Lagerny to the southeast of the fortress in 1857, a monument was erected "to the killed 63 sailors and soldiers during the bombardment of Sveaborg by the Anglo-French fleet on July 28 and 29, 1855". The project of the monument was carried out by Professor Baron P. Klodt (the one who cast the horses for the Anichkov Bridge in St. Petersburg). But these are small exceptions, and so almost all-wise, right? The wolf skerries are at the disposal of tourists.
You can safely allocate a whole day to visit Suomenlinna, and then you will not be able to see everything that is in the fortress.
But not only those who like to remember the past victories of Russian weapons make sense to go to the Wolf Skerries. The fortress is a fortress, but it is also a place where you can just walk, admire the nature, and besides, various events are constantly held there - open air concerts, sailing regattas, exhibitions.
Most local residents prefer to eat prudently brought with them food. And this is not a stupid decision. Although in order to find a place catering, no special problems. The most popular among tourists restaurant Walhalla, however, is open to ordinary visitors only for dinner from Monday to Saturday, and on Sunday and lunchtime only organized groups are allowed there.
Russian patriots can recommend the Nikolai pizzeria. It was named after the merchant Nikolai Petrovich Sinebryukhov, who in 1819 received the exclusive right to produce and sell beer in Finland and almost immediately after receiving a patent, who opened a tavern in Sveaborg. The brewing company Oy Sinebryhoff AB bearing his name still exists (here, however, belongs to the Swedish Carlsberg).
Ferries bearing the inscription "Suomenlinna Sveaborg" leave from the fish market (Kauppatori) of Helsinki from 6 am to 2:20 am at intervals of 40 minutes to one hour. Travel time is 15 minutes. The return ticket price is € 3.80. In summer, water buses also leave the neighboring pier. Helsinki card holders can use the ferry and visit all the museums in the fortress free of charge. You can park your own yacht at the guest port on the island of Susisaari, subject to availability.
Suomenlinna can be visited all year round, the fortress is open 365 days a year, but it is better to do it in the summer. The islands are home to 900 people, about 400 more work on them. Many houses on the islands are used as art studios. On the territory of the Suomenlinna fortress there is a prison for those convicted of minor crimes. The prisoners are mainly engaged in maintaining the fortresses in proper form.
The entrance to the fortress itself is free, you have to pay only when visiting museums. The fortress houses the Suomenlinna Museum, the Ehrensvärd Museum, the Manege (Museum of the Soviet-Finnish and Second World War), the Vessiko submarine, and a free customs museum. It is hard not to notice that most of the guns in the fortress have inscriptions in Russian. It will be especially pleasant, I think, to study them for the natives of Perm.
The local church was once the garrison church of the Russian limited contingent in Sveaborg and was called Alexander Nevsky Cathedral. The cathedral was built by the architect Konstantin Ton. And although not only Lutheran, but also Orthodox services have been held here since 2000, the external appearance of the building was irreparably damaged back in 1928 by the architect Frans Seström. Instead of a small copy of the Moscow Cathedral of Christ the Savior, we now see an unremarkable Lutheran temple.
While in the fortress, somewhere around 17: 20-17: 30 you can take part in the daily ritual - together with other tourists, wave your hand to the Silja Line ferry passing by towards Stockholm. If you are late for any reason and don't wave, don't worry. In half an hour you will be given a second attempt - to escort the Viking ferry to the Swedish capital.
Thanks to the Schengen Agreement, today you can go from Helsinki to Stockholm for a day or two without any visas. And the ferries mentioned are in themselves attractions of both Scandinavian capitals. And if you are sailing aboard one of them, do not miss at the very beginning of the journey the island with the fortress, from the shore of which strangers wave their hands to you.
ALEXEY ALEXEEV
proof
Technical sponsor
Have you ever noticed that in any city on Earth, most interesting places are always in close proximity to each other. You just walk on the historic center - and "string" the sights one by one, like multicolored beads of beads on a needle and thread ... Cathedral, here is the Senate Square ... And now the Old Market, and behind it you can see the Assumption Cathedral ... One after another ... One after another ...
Everything seems to be smooth and even ... Aha !!! No matter how it is! .. As well as the beads of beads that tend to roll over the sofa, and among the sights of the conventional city of X, there will certainly be one or two such points for which you will have to trudge to the other end of the earth. Places such as the rebel squad in the world of attractions. Whatever you take, in almost every city of the world you will definitely find something similar. Personally, I, at least, have seen such pictures many times already. Want an example? Yes, at least ten! .. This and, and, and the Lennusadam Museum in Tallinn, and ... I can continue this list for a long time. But in fact, now within the framework of this particular article, it does not matter in principle. After all, today I would like to tell you about just one of these places, the most "inaccessible" sight of Helsinki - the old fortress Suomenlinna (also known as Sveaborg).
Despite the fact that this place is often referred to as a Helsinki “ must see", It is not so easy to get to it. The Susisaaret islands, on which the fortress stands, are cut off from the city by the waters of the Gulf of Finland. Therefore, getting here, it immediately seems that you are already, as it were, not quite in Helsinki. The water surface is spreading around ... Huge smooth boulders come close to the shore ... And above all this, like a local "gopota", a detachment of ivy gulls circling ...
It is quiet around - and it seems that in just 10 minutes you have traded noisy Helsinki for some nice and cozy suburb.
Anyway, okay ... Something I’ve gone out of business ... We need to reduce the degree of vanilla. Let me tell you everything in order ...
A little history (albeit quite a bit) ...
The decision to build fortresses on the Susisaaret Islands ("Wolf Skerries") was made after the Russian-Swedish war in the middle of the 18th century. At that time, the territory of modern Finland was part of the Swedish Empire, and therefore the fortress itself was named Sveaborg (which means "Swedish fortress"). After Finland gained independence, the local bastions were used during the civil war 1918. A camp for the Finnish Red Guards was formed on the islands, and the fortress itself was officially named Suomenlinna (literally - "Finnish fortress"). Why am I writing this? The thing is that today the Finnish and Swedish languages \u200b\u200bhave official status in Finland, so the fortress is alternately called Sveaborg and Suomenlinna. Thus, today this island bastion is called both Finnish and Swedish.
In 1991, the fortress complex, along with other island buildings, was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List. Today it houses numerous museums, a naval academy, the remains of old artillery, private houses with nine hundred permanent residents, and even a "light security" prison, whose inmates maintain the fortress in proper shape. The Finns themselves (as it seemed to me) usually use this place as a picnic area: while tourists were running around the island with cameras, they simply sat peacefully on the rocks and, eating the supplies they brought with them, looked at the rocks and the water surface.
To tell you the truth, it is for the sake of picnics and the picturesque nature of this place that you should go here from Helsinki. Everything else - fortresses, cannons and other structures made much less impression on me. The exception is these grassy fortifications, similar to Bilbo Baggins' houses.
They are cool. And everything else - walls and walls ... I could not write anything more about them. But the blogger's duty dictates ... Therefore, further there will be a big story about all the interesting places that can be found on this island. Let's start by giving you a mini-tour here. And the technical aspects (such as "how to get to Sveaborg" and where to rent a house) will be left for last ...
Sveaborg fortress: churches, cannons and "Russian" houses ...
In general, it is believed that there are many "attractions" in this place: tourist maps, which can be obtained in the information center, as many as 45 different points are marked !!! But most of them can be classified as attractions only formally. Mostly these are various museums, shafts and catering facilities. Another thing is that all of them are located rather compactly and, as if on a thread, are strung on the "blue route", which stretches across two islands at once.
It starts from the main pier, and then passes through the "Russian village" where merchants from Russia once lived ...
Past the garrison church ...
War Museum ...
Numerous souvenir shops ...
"Messiah ... Save your breath" ...
And low bridges connecting the shores with each other.
So that tourists do not get confused on the islands, here and there there are special signs showing the way to the main points of Sveaborg. Seeing certain interesting points on the signs, Tanya and I constantly changed the route and went to the sides, now to the right, then to the left. This is how (unplanned) we, for example, got to submarine Vesikko(I called her "Suliko").
I cannot say that it makes any special impression (like, for example, the Lembit submarine, which is in the Tallinn Maritime Museum). But it's definitely worth taking a turn to her for a couple of minutes. After all, you don't see submarines on the streets every day.
If someone is especially interested in the topic of boats, I would also note that there is also a "dry port" on the territory of the Suomenlinna Islands. Really dry ... (like an uncertified Rollton). It is located to the right of Of the Great Castle Yard with the tomb of Ehrensvärd (this, by the way, is another boat).
This courtyard looks very nice ... Everywhere there are spreading trees, rough stones overgrown with green ivy, as well as all the same old Swedish cannons, of which there are as many as there are seagulls flying overhead ... Then there will be photos. I think they will tell everything better than me.
Returning to the topic of dry dock, I note that in June 2017, when I was personally on the island, this place looked rather pathetic.
In the middle of a huge hollow stood one single ship, and around it lay the remains of some kind of logs and pipes. However - see for yourself. In the pictures from the tourist brochures, this place looked much more presentable.
We looked there for a couple of minutes, took pictures and returned to the blue route again. Flowers in pots bloomed around ...
A lilac swayed overhead ...
And the ubiquitous Chinese tried to feed seagulls from the bridge right from the bridge.
Damn ... When I see such pictures, Zadornov wakes up in me with his eternal: "Well, stupid ...". I stood behind them and prayed that the next seagull would peck out an eye to one of these citizens of the Middle Kingdom. Well, or at least tore off an earring ... And this is me now almost seriously. Seagulls in Finland can only be fed with poison !!! Those who have been to Helsinki will understand me. These are not birds, but the air mafia. They steal food, fly right over their heads ... I once even read a story on the Internet that a seagull on a pier in Helsinki snatched a camera from a tourist. On the berths of the city there are special signs “Do not feed the seagulls”. But these are the Chinese ... They say that one day they will take over the world. Damn ... One hope is for the Japanese (that they will still invent their robots and will deal with China in the near future). I would not want to eat one rice for days in old age ...
Seascapes and the King's Gate
Probably, while reading this text, you are now all asking the question: "Where is that very fortress, which is constantly being discussed here?" I answer: the whole point is that the Sveaborg fortress is not a single bastion, but rather a certain set of walls and cannons located on the very islands in the Gulf of Finland.
The grassy walls of the fortress are found everywhere here. Just don't expect to see a single one on the islands architectural complex like the Moscow Kremlin or something like that. The Sveaborg fortress is walls, walls, walls, cannons, walls ... plus this Royal Gate, which is one of the unspoken symbols of this place.
As I said at the very beginning, it is worth going here for the seascapes ...
Hobbits' huts and other fabulous buildings that look like stone giants peeping out of the ground ...
Or, for example, to have a picnic on the rocky shores of the island ...
For example, we did just that. We took a blanket, food and two cans of cranberry gin - climbed further away and began to rest. Somewhere near the shore a couple of white swans were swarming ...
Ahead, among the waves and flourishes of the miserly sun, the sails of some small ship flashed ...
At that moment, the ubiquitous seagulls no longer even enraged me (although one of them whistled a cherry at me and in a matter of seconds swallowed it along with the stone).
Probably our best day in Finland during the whole three-day trip to Helsinki. A sort of culmination of the journey. It is there on any trip. But now I will not strongly promote this topic ... I will just write that it is definitely worth a trip to the islands of the Suomenlinna fortress. Especially in clear weather. Further in this article, as promised, I will write to you on how to do this.
Suomenlinna (Sveaborg): how to get from Helsinki
Special ships, included in the public transport system, go to the islands every day from 6 am to 2 am to 8 pm. They leave from such a station next to Market square Helsinki. Usually, during the daytime there are many people around her. Therefore, you will not miss it.
You can buy a ticket at the box office or from the machine (5 euros). It is valid for 12 hours (so you can go there and back with one ticket).
You can also go on a trip with a regular city pass for 24 hours (HSL) or a Helsinki card. The ferries themselves run regularly. The interval of movement is from 20 minutes to 1 hour (but you should be guided by the lower figure - there are large intervals between flights here only at night). Travel time is 15 minutes. The ships themselves have both open and closed areas. The first time we rode on the "roof" of the ferry ...
But we were already returning back, having settled down on the inner platform.
On the way, the ferry sails several small islands. In clear weather, sailing in the open area is very pleasant. The only thing that spoils the impression a little is seagulls flying directly overhead. As you understand, in this story they are the main antagonists.
After arriving on the island, there is a tourist information center right in front of you. On the other side, there is a grocery store and a board with a flight schedule. If for some reason this option does not suit you and instead of 5 euros you really want to pay all seven for a ride, you can also sail to the islands on the "water buses" of the JT-Line company. Detailed information routes and timetables can be viewed on their official website www.jt-line.fi.
Where to rent a house on the islands
Next to the fortress, right on the islands, is the Suomenlinna hostel, opened in a former school building. The hostel has rooms for two or three or 6-10 people. Therefore, if you wish, there is something to choose. In summer double Room in this place will cost you 68 euros (which is quite a low amount for Helsinki). A bed in the dormitory will cost 25. In the "off-season" prices are lower. Check them
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