We're in FINLAND! 🇫🇮 Helsinki FOOD + city tour (in the WINTER!)

We've made it to FINLAND! 🇫🇮 The main purpose of our European winter trip was to experience a TRUE winter. And let's just say, Finland delivered on that front! And to kick things off, we spent a couple days in the country's capital of Helsinki! We spent two days exploring the city, plus trying a bunch of local Finnish foods for the first time.

📍Locations in this video
To see everywhere we went during our time in Helsinki, check out this map:

Note: you can save this map to your Google Maps, to access it on your own adventure!

⌚Timestamps
00:00 Introduction
00:57 Trying Korvapuusti and Mustikkapiirakka at Cafe Regatta
03:12 Exploring downtown Helsinki and its churches
04:20 First impressions of Helsinki
05:23 Trying Lohikeitto at Merimakasiini
07:13 The days are very short here
08:07 Taking the ferry to Suomenlinna
09:25 Exploring Suomenlinna
12:05 Trying vendance/muikku
14:04 Old Market Hall
14:35 Trying a Karelian Pie (Karjalanpiirakka)
15:04 Trying Salmiakki
17:34 It’s New Year’s Eve!
18:12 Recap of 2023
19:15 Happy New Year!

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👋🏼 About us
Hi y’all! We’re Adam, Kathryn, and Kona, an adventurous married couple (+ pup!) living on the road in our self-converted sprinter van! You can often find us driving all around the US and Canada, scoping out the best coffee shops, eating tacos and ice cream (we're a 5+ taco and 2+ scoop household), and enjoying nature.

We help travelers spend less time (and stress!) planning their trip and more time enjoying it! Our detailed travel guides, YouTube videos, and travel resources share the must-visit local eats, popular and off the beaten path sights, and tons of tips to make planning your next adventure a whole lot easier.

Note: We’ve linked a handful of items so you can see exactly which products we take with us. Full disclosure--if you click on these links and make a purchase, we get a small commission at no extra cost to you. We will only ever recommend products we truly love, actually use during our adventures, and think you can benefit from too!

[AdventuresofAplusK]

📅 This video was filmed in late December 2023

[MAbi]

Thank you for pronouncing sauna right. I really appreciate the fact that you do your best to pronounce things the way the locals do.

[Heffsta]

Finland is so gorgeous. So spaced out, so friendly, and actually surprisingly great food.

[tremagon]

3:23 that parent dragging the kid around sent me

[DyanK]

As a Canadian who is so fed up with winter, I would never have considered travelling to a cold place in winter!! It is so refreshing to see winter through your eyes and your enthusiasm and happiness in experiencing it for the first time brought a smile to my face. Maybe it’s not so bad after all! Thanks for all the 2023 adventures! Happy 2024!🎉

[j.w.grayson]

We spent a day in Helsinki while on a Baltic cruise, the site that amazed us the most was the Helsinki Central Library Oodi, that opened on Dec 31, 2016. I've never seen a public library that had so many option/services for locals to use.

[honorab]

I was in Finland a few weeks after you and absolutely loved it. My friends and I all described it as magical. It's great to see it again through your eyes. I can't way to see more from your time there.

[santaclaus]

You gotta go in the summer. Having daylight all the time feels even crazier than having so little of it. I've experienced that in the far south of Argentina. Bright daylight at 4 am. I was shocked. thought I overslept. Then I was even more shocked and in disbelief when I looked at the clock.

[TheDeathslaw]

It is nice to see you enjoy my home town and you clearly have done your homework before getting here, picking up pretty much the best winter tourist things to do in helsinki and stuff to eat!

Also great cinematography, there was some lovely shots around!

[poika]

I appreciate how you take the effort to speak softly in indoor spaces. Always makes me uncomfortable when travel youtubers treat the other patrons like extras in their scene. Subscribed.

PS. I walked past you within like 5 meters on that new year's lol

[Star-utl]

Fish are Finnish French fries! So proud of both of Be brave.

[ohmp]

Glad to see that you had good time in our home country. I was also impressed how well you had done your "homework" with facts etc.

[davidnilles]

What a great year y’all had! Thanks for taking us along. 👏

[nicholasbartonlaw]

The cold's not too bad if you have a warm inviting places to visit that delight the senses. Your practice of really savoring the places you experience shows this is true of Helsinki in the winter.

[m.m.]

This looks so beautiful.

I'm in Germany and this winter has been nothing but a total disappointment. January started off pretty cool, with snow even in the valleys, but since then it has been constantly raining with no snow at all. Rainy and mild winters are depressing indeed, snowy winters are just so magical.

[mbrooks]

Y'all got me teary-eyed at the end with your 2023 recap, which reminded me again how traveling (no matter where you go!) really opens up your world in so many ways. Thanks again for sharing all your travels, which truly inspire me to keep exploring. Love that cooking over an open outside fire experience - would love to see more of that in the States! And I'm gonna find a recipe to try that Lohikeitto soup - that looked AMAZING!!! When you edit your videos, especially of the foods you eat, does it bring you right back to those moments? What awesome experiences to be rekindled through this channel!!

[NewEnglandwilderness]

Texans learning to love snow, awesome, this is why I watch. Enjoy from a New Englander.

[TuomasLevoniemi]

Salmiakki does not taste salty. It has its own unique taste, but apparently it's not really distinguishable from saltiness if you're not used to it.

[candycornett]

Nice to see it in the winter. Thank you for sharing your experience while you travel.

[lesliebrown]

I visited a town in Sweden near the Arctic circle in winter about 25-30 years ago. What i found is that the snow helps when less daylight. The reflection of lights in town made it seem not quite so dark.
For me it was harder to adjust visiting the same place in summer when the sun doesn't set.