The food and drink in Finland I did manage to try

Ok, so I didn't make it to Juuri's. But what did I eat?

As mentioned, I stopped off for Finnish coffee and cinnamon cake at the Regatta Cafe. Both sadly were let downs. The coffee was really really weak and really really watery, when all I wanted was a stiff cuppa joe. And the cinnamon cake was bizarrely stale. Bizarrely so, as I could see it being made freshly in the back.

I ended up getting a snack at Ravintola Taberna Bacchus, a neighborhood joint that had been there since 1878. I had a lead on a place called Ravintola 10 at the same address, so I thought this would be good.

It turned into pretty straightforward beer and pizza. The pizza was frutti di mare, with some good seafood and some sketchier seafood (tuna, were you canned?). The beer was a barely passable light lager. Not the homespun salmon soup I had been hoping for...

But then things started to look up. I made my way to the working-class neighborhood of Kallio and to the bar named Ravintola Tovari. Inside was a classy beer pub, with books on the walls, games on the shelves, and beer on tap.

The first beer I had was Kesayo Vehnaolut. It was excellent, just really good. A full of flavor wheat beer with an odd northern kick.

By the time I got my second beer, I was well into the book "Those Without Shadows" by Francoise Sagan. I have to admit, when I pulled it off the shelves, I was hoping it would be by Carl Sagan. No luck there, but I did have a nice read of twenty-something French youngsters in the past wondering what life is for. Good existentialism! And the second beer was good too, a Keisari that was a light ale.

Oh, and I almost played Monopoly with Helsinkian towns, too.

The next morning, it was time for my last meal. I decided to explore the Hakaniemi Open-Air Market. Worth it! This market was a mix of everything, from garage sales to cheap clothes to fresh fruit.

And they had stands selling freshly fried little fish, some kind of sardine. They were fried in an unbelievable amount of butter, topped with lemon. And they were unbelievably good. Buttery, full of flesh, bite size, and buttery.