Honeymoon - Iceland: City walk - Hallgrímskirkja - Tapasbarinn

This day was an exciting day with lots of activities to check off. 
We went for a nice breakfast at Sandholt that serves all the pretty tasty looking cakes, bread, sandwiches! 

We tried the Icelandic doughnut and a sweet cake. I prefer the Singapore doughnut. haha. 

We have booked a free city tour walk to understanding their history and culture. It is recommended to provide them some tips whatever amount, afterall they spent their time sharing with you isn't it? 
This is the link where we chose our tour.
https://citywalk.is/

It was around 2hrs of the tour. Popular sights such as Hallgrimskirkja or Harpa was only talked about as we could go in and spend time ourselves outside the tour. 

We headed for lunch before continuing our sightseeing, so we went to Icelandic Fish and Chips. Not cheap! This cost about SGD$32! The sauce also cost money ok. 
But luckily the fish was really fresh and the salad is niceeeee…. the "chips" is the roasted potatoes which was tasty!

We continued our sightseeing, exploring Harpa Concert Hall and Hallgrimskirkja. It was raining so we spent some time indoors.

For dinner, we went to an atas place that sells Icelandic authenic food, and that means eating puffin, whale ……
The place is called Tapasbarinn, and we chose the Icelandic Gourmet Feast.

What it includes:
- Shot of Icelandic "Brennivin" (Icelandic liquor)
- Lamb tenderloin in liquorice sauce (Icelandic LOVES liquorice)
- Smoked puffin with blueberry "Brennivin" sauce
- Icelandic arctic char with bellpepper-salsa
- Lobster tails baked in garlic
- Pan fried blue ling with lobster sauce
- Minke Whale with cranberry-malt sauce
- Grilled Icelandic lamb with beer-butterscotch sauce
- White chocolate "Skyr" mousse with passion coulis

The puffin was not bad, the lobster tail as well. The whale was fantastic! The lamb as well. 
The dessert was awesome! 
In fact, I really love this meal. Very unique but still taste really good. 
I do not like the strong brennivin and the liquorice though. Well, I generally hate liquorice taste. 
Recommended place to try your Icelandic food! 

Smoked Puffin

Shot + liquorice sauce

Forgot what was this...

Minke whale

Lobster tails

Icelandic lamb

Blue ling

Arctic char

Skyr mousse

It was such a great day and awesome food. I'm loving Iceland too! 

Honeymoon - Iceland: Sagreifinn

We are heading to Part 2 of our honeymoon today! Next up - ICELAND.
We took the morning packing up and buying some souvenirs before heading to the airport. 

Our flight was Finnair costing us about USD$300+ for 2 person to Keflavik. Upon arrival, we took the Gray Line bus that stopped near our apartment. We chose a budget apartment since we will be out most of the time and also prices in Iceland is not cheap! Oh, actually everywhere also not cheap lah, but we spent quite luxuriously at Finland remember? haha.. 

We stayed at Stay Apartment at Einholt, which is a self-service apartment. No front desk or anything. If you need help, there's a phone to call them. We chose this also because it has free parking as we will be renting car after this. 
The place is clean so that's fine for us. 

Because my luggage cracked when I landed, I had to check some insurance stuff and also went to the supermarket to stock up snacks and water. There is a big supermarket called Bonus near our apartment so very very convenient. However, here the supermarket closes early at 6pm so do your grocery before dinner! Oh, and bring your own carriers cause they charge. 
By the time we were done, it was getting close to dinner time, so we headed for the tourist information centre first before going for dinner. We need data for our Iceland journey, and our Starhub data didn't cover Iceland... so we found out tourist information centre do sell that.

Then we headed for Sagreifinn - The Sea Baron located near the seaside, supposedly famous for lobster soup! 
It also sells lot of different types of seafood, fishes, and you can pick what you want (in sticks), and they grill it for you, similar to "lok-lok".
We order lobster soup, 1 grilled fish and scallop. It is not cheap.... cost us ISK4.5K, which is about SGD$50. I find it not worth it... and not that great.... 

It was quite dark already, so we strolled back and purposely pass by the famous Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur - the famous Baejarins hotdog! If you didn't do your homework, you couldn't have stopped by and eat, cause it's just a cart out of nowhere. 

It was dark, so no photos, but it was really tasty and warm - shiok when the weather is cold. It cost ISK450 though. 

All ready for the next day to tour the city!

Honeymoon - Finland: Helsinki - Cafe Regatta - City Sights

Off we went to Café Regatta, a quaint little house by the seaside. It was quite a distance, not a the city centre, so we took public bus and had to walk abit. 

I can't remember what we had, but one was cinnamon bun, the other is some pie with sweet cream.

Now to the sightseeing. They are all within the city area, so we walked to the different locations - Helsinki Cathedral, Senate Square, Tori Quarters, Esplanadi. 

Helsinki Cathedral is huge and very beautiful. It looks like the Supreme Court in Singapore. 

It stands right in front of the Senate Square, a status of Alexander (I think?)…. 

The clouds were low that day, the mist covering the tip of the cathedral. 

Esplanadi - Just a big park with rows of shopping on opposite both sides. 

And the most interesting place in Helsinki in my opinion is … the old market hall! hahah... It's a hall with food/ dry goods/café... 

I think I spent a lot of time inside looking at each shop, figuring what food is that. cause many are unfamiliar to me. 

We settled for lunch here where there was a crowd so we decided to try! It serves soup in a huge bowl, we both shared one, with free flow of bread. It taste different from the usual soup I drink, but it's nice!

We filled our tummy, and off we went to Suomenlinna Fortress, a UNESCO world heritage. 

It shows the history of Finland, where Finland used to be part of Sweden, and also shows the history of their world war. You will need to catch the Suomenlinna ferry over, which was an amazing sight. 

The ferry could let cars in! and not only that, I experience first time in my life, a ferry travelling and crashing through the ice berg on the sea! It was a little bumpy at first, but after that it was fine. 

The fortress is big, but unfortunately I think it's not suitable for winter time, cause there's nothing to see, and it's quite dangerous in some areas as during winter no one maintains the fortress. It was quite icy and prone to slipping. It isn't as beautiful as I thought it would be. The trees are all botak. 

After that, while we still had time, we decided to visit another market - Hakaniemi Market Hall. 

We took a train over... the place was most upscale than the old market hall. More gourmet food. It also sells non-food items like cards/sewing stuff etc.

We had a little tea break there before heading back for dinner. 

Inside the train

We were searching for dinner places, and randomly came across this Japanese joint and decided to settle for that. Been so long since I had some hot and soupy and ASIAN. 
It was really so good! I slurped down all the soup!  

 That's the end of our Helsinki trip. Well, I think I would have spent more time in other areas of Rovaniemi and skip Helsinki as it is just another city and nothing much to do. One day is enough to tour everything. Not my favourite city in this honeymoon. 

Next up is ICELAND!!!!!  

Honeymoon - Finland: Rovaniemi - Helsinki

It was the end of Rovaniemi... we took the bus all the back to Rovaniemi airport. Took about 3 hrs in total. We were early at the airport since the timing of the bus was fixed. 
This was the bus... 

 The airport is really quite small... and the café is so-so... 

Beautiful sky upon departure. 

We took Norwegian Air to Helsinki, cost about $333 for 2 person. 
Upon arriving at Helsinki, we took their train HSR from the airport to city centre. Cost 5 euros per person. Took about 30min to city. 
https://www.hsl.fi/en/timetables-and-routes/terminals/transport-links-helsinki-airport

The train is clean and nice looking, spacious too!

The screen show the journey, hard to get lost. City centre is the last stop.

We went to check in at our air bnb, hurried did some laundry before heading out for dinner. 
The sunset is early, so it gets dark pretty early.

We went to Lappi Restaurant for a good Lappish meal! The ambience was quiet and cosy. We had a traditional salmon soup for starter, reindeer fillet and fried whitebait for our main course. The whitebait wasn't quite nice for me as I find it too jelat after eating a few. Maybe because it's fried? 

We enjoyed our night stroll back and planned for the next day.