Snowy Adventures in Helsinki

March 15, 2023March 15, 2023 / Maria / Leave a comment

Even though this blog is mostly focused on hiking and adventures, I initially started it 13 years ago as a travel blog! After a long pandemic, it’s exciting to finally have some travel adventures to write about. My last major trip was to New Zealand for my honeymoon just before the pandemic, so I’ve been excited to start traveling again. My cousin Katie is studying new media art in Helsinki, so I decided to book a trip to visit her in early 2022. I ended up cancelling that trip because of the Omicron outbreak, but I decided to make another attempt at it this year, and fortunately, this time it was successful!

Seth and I planned the trip for two weeks at the end of February, starting in Helsinki. The last time I was in Europe was 10 years ago when I lived in the UK for a year in 2012, and I forgot how fun it is to travel there. The last time I visited I was flying from the East Coast of Canada, so I had a lot further to go from Vancouver. We flew through Chicago and Stockholm, and it was a pretty rough flight over. Our flight was late leaving Vancouver and we had less than an hour to transfer when we arrived in Chicago. In most circumstances this would be plenty of time, but we were dismayed to learn that our flight to Stockholm was in another terminal and required us to transfer by bus and go through security again in order to make our flight. Security was extremely busy and after much running through the airport, we made it just in time for the final boarding call.

Fortunately, things went a lot smoother in Stockholm and we immediately indulged ourselves on the plentiful selection of pastries that seem to be available all over Europe. I tried as many as I could while we there and I’ve come to the conclusion that almond croissants are my favourite. Seth is more partial to the cinnamon buns. We flew through the night to get to Stockholm, but we didn’t sleep because of the time difference. It was a beautiful day in Stockholm when we arrived, with green grass, blue skies, and sun… not that we left the airport to enjoy it.

We had one final flight across the Baltic to Helsinki. It’s only about a 40 minute flight and as we approached Finland, the sun disappeared into the clouds and thick layer of mist lay over Finland. We only got our first glimpse just before landing in a snow covered wonderland. When I checked in with Katie before the trip, she told me it had been very warm and that Helsinki had no snow, but apparently we brought it with us because it snowed for 3 days straight after we landed. Everyone assured us Helsinki is much more beautiful in the snow and we enjoyed watching the snow settle on the trees and a think layer of sea-ice freeze over the Baltic.

Katie lives slightly outside Helsinki in a community called Espoo, where she’s going to school at Aalto University. Helsinki is well connected by bus and train though, so we didn’t have any problem getting around (except at the end of the trip when the buses went on strike!). We arrived at her place around 1pm, which is 3am Vancouver time, but we forced ourselves to stay awake to try and adjust to the jetlag as quickly as possible. It made for a long tiring day, but we didn’t regret it the next day.

We figured the easiest way to fight the exhaustion was to keep moving, so Katie took us out to explore Helsinki. We went for a little walk around her neighbourhood and were immediately introduced to how the Finns feel about cold therapy. Katie lives by the water and pointed out a dock that the locals frequently swim from year round. We were only there for about 10 minutes and saw a half dozen people coming in and out of the water. I like a good cold dunk, but it takes a special kind of person to get undressed in the freezing cold, get in the water, and then have to get dry and re-dressed… also in the freezing cold.

We jumped on the metro to make our way to downtown Helsinki. It was all a bit of a blur, but we visited the rail station and some of the large cathedrals that dominate the Helsinki skyline. I admit, Helsinki is not the first place I think of when I picture Europe, but it still felt very European. It’s not as iconic as London or Paris, but there’s lots of old and interesting architecture and I really liked how the city is nestled along the Baltic. We opted for an early supper along the water at a pizza restaurant, which was delicious, but the point at which we both started crashing. So we ended up returning to Katie’s and we were both asleep before 8am. Seth’s head hit the pillow at 7:30pm and I swear he was asleep in less than 30 seconds!

We woke up early the next morning to a beautiful sunrise. Our first full day was much less tiring, but no less eventful. Katie had classes, so we entertained ourselves by finding some more pastries in which to indulge and continuing our exploration of the downtown. Suomenlinna came highly recommended, so we decided to visit. It’s a small island located 15 minutes out of downtown Helsinki by ferry. It’s home to a small community of less than 1000 people and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. There’s a lot of history associated with this island, so I’ll do my best to summarize (my first attempt on Instagram was corrected by the official Suomenlinna account, whoops!).

Finland was originally part of the Kingdom of Sweden, which is why a lot of people in Finland still speak Swedish and you see Finnish, Swedish, and English on most signs. Suomenlinna was a military fortress constructed by Sweden in the mid 1700’s, and originally went by the name of Sveaborg, to protect against invasion from Russia. Ultimately, they were unsuccessful and the fortress was ceded to the Russians in the early 1800’s. It was held by the Russian’s until 1917, when Finland declared independence and Russia willingly departed the fortress and the country. It was renamed Suomenlinna by Finland.

It’s very well preserved and fun to visit a fortress that’s actually seen a bit of action throughout the years. I believe it’s Helsinki’s most popular tourist attraction and was especially beautiful in the snow. Unfortunately there are no guided walking tours in the off season (only on Saturdays) so we visited the museum first and then proceeded to walk around the entire island, exploring the stone walls and cannons and making a visit to King’s Bridge. In the evening, Katie showed us around her university campus and all the cool creative projects that are underway in the art building, and we finished the night with some Nepalese food.

Trip to Los Angeles

February 15, 2023 / Maria / Leave a comment

I didn’t get up to very much hiking during the Fall last year, but I was still busy having other kinds of adventures! I’ve never been to Los Angeles and this is probably one of the most spontaneous trips I’ve gone on since I lived in Europe a decade ago. It seemed like everyone on social media was seeing Harry Styles in concert and less than a month before the trip, I impulsively decided that I wanted to go see Harry in concert too. A quick google search revealed he would be in Los Angeles, which is near enough to Vancouver without being too far away for a weekend.

I sent Carolyn a quick text message and we had the following exchange:

Mar: I’m thinking of going to LA to see Harry Styles in November, you interested?

Car: Oooo, I’ve never been there and that sounds fun, but I need to sleep on it.

(9 minutes later)

Car: Forget it, I’m in!

She came to my house a few days later and we booked the flights and concert tickets.

We both used points for the flight, so it was pretty reasonable and we flew direct both ways. The concert was a good deal more expensive than the flights, so we decided to re-visit our younger years and stay in a hostel to save money. I’m definitely past my hostel days and prefer a quiet room to myself, but the accommodations in LA are outrageously expensive and Carolyn got it in her head that we should stay in Santa Monica (pretty much the most expensive). So we scrimped on the hostel so that we could stay in Santa Monica and spend the money on ubers instead. It was mild torture being hungover in a communal space on Sunday morning, but I didn’t regret it too much. YOLO.

Similar to when I went to Vegas, I didn’t expect to like the city, but ended up actually having a really good time! LA is a big city known for its urban sprawl and lack of transit, but it was so much friendlier than I was expecting. It felt a lot less grimy than when I recently re-visited Portland and I actually felt pretty safe as the people were quite nice. California and the PNW in general are known for being a bit more liberal and I definitely found this to be the case in LA. Plus the weather rocks!

It was around 20 degrees celsius when we visited, which appeared cold to a lot of the locals judging by their choice of dress (puffy jackets!), but it was nice and balmy to us and we wore shorts all weekend. We were treated to sun throughout the entire trip and it was lovely to take a break from Vancouver’s monotonous rain and clouds in the middle of Fall.

We left after work on Friday evening and got to LA late on Friday night. Neither of us had a working American cell phone (or even a roaming data plan), but we managed to find enough wifi throughout the trip to call ourselves ubers whenever we needed them. After a confusing departure from the airport, we arrived to the hostel in Santa Monica in time to go to bed. Sadly our companions were up at the crack of dawn, so being early risers ourselves, we made a reasonably early start on the day. We saved even more money at the hostel’s breakfast bar before flushing it all down the drain trying to purchase bus tickets. In our defense, the machine overcharged us and we ended up with a handful of extra passes.

We took the bus into West Hollywood, which ended up being our only bus ride of the trip. You can take two hikers out of the woods, but you can’t make them stop walking. We ended up logging more than 10km walking around the city on Saturday. Carolyn humoured me with a visit to two bookstores right at the start and they were both amazing! The first was Book Soup, which is an independent bookstore with a fantastic collection and actual ladders on the walls. Then we hopped around the corner to Mystery Pier Books, which is a specialty store that just sells first editions of books! It was pretty incredible; it had all these old editions of books, but I’m not sure how much they actually sell because they’re all so special. I thought they should charge $5 to get in the store because you get a lot of busy bodies like us (okay me) who are enthralled with the concept, but unsurprisingly purchase nothing.

So after that obvious highlight of the trip, we spent the rest of the day walking around Hollywood. We started on Sunset Blvd, where we had lunch, before eventually transitioning up to Hollywood Blvd to do the Walk of Fame. I visited 3 Targets trying to find Taylor Swift’s special Midnights album for Emily to no avail. Once we had our fill of cupcakes on the Walk of Fame, we walked around some more looking for wifi to call an uber to the Royal Observatory in Griffiths Park. This involved running back and forth across the street a few times to get the best network, but we made it work!

It was so worth it! It was crazy busy at Griffith Park, but I loved everything about the observatory. From the cool architecture, to the science museum, to the view of the Hollywood Sign. It’s a desert right in the middle of the city. We debated calling an uber back when we were done, but ended up deciding to hike down through the park instead. It got us away from the crowded road, but we didn’t really have enough time to wait for the bus, so we still ended up having to call an uber to take us the lengthy distance back to Santa Monica.

Once back at the hostel, we quickly got ready for Harry Styles while picking a restaurant to eat before the show. We were literally getting ready to leave when I got a text from Emily telling me that Harry had cancelled the show! We knew it was a possibility because he had cancelled the previous night’s show, but he had given more than just an hour’s notice when he cancelled the previous show, so we’d been optimistic our concert would happen. But alas, it was not meant to be. It was pretty disappointing because neither of us was interested in coming back for a concert that would be re-scheduled mid-week in January, so we decided to make the best of it and went out in our concert apparel instead! We were able to get our money back for the show, so our logic was that we now had a pretty hefty entertainment budget for the evening.

We started at Onyx Rooftop Bar in Santa Monica where we ordered fancy cocktails to enjoy outside on the roof. It sounded like a swanky idea, except for the little issue where we were the only people who actually found it warm enough to be on the roof. But instead of crying over our $35 drinks, we befriended the only other people on the roof and got some club recommendations for later.

We left the rooftop in search of cheaper drinks and decided on a Mexican restaurant, only to accidentally go into the wrong building and end up eating at a much less exciting grill. Unsurprisingly, neither of us noticed until we were halfway through our entrees and started commenting on the lack of tacos on the menu. It was too late to remedy the situation, so we decided to go next door to the Cantina for a drink afterwards instead. Our Harry Styles shirts were a big hit among the street crowds and our bartender took pity on us a treated us to a round. After that, it was time to finally find some dancing.

If you ever travel with me, the first thing you’ll learn is that while I extensively research all the natural attractions I want to visit, I don’t care a toss about restaurants and clubs. I like to eat good food and have fun, but I’m just as happy to wonder into some hole in the wall restaurant as a fancy one. Our young and hip friends from the Onyx had advised us about a hot club called The Bungalow, but we opted for a Google find first called Harvelle’s. It was only $10 (and no line) to get in and we ended up loving it! It’s a small little jazz bar with live music. It doesn’t attract the young and hip crowd, but we had a great time dancing to the live music and having enough space to actually walk around.

That was a real contrast to The Bungalow. We had to wait in line to get in and once we did, it was wall-to-wall people. It was definitely a party with a massive dance floor and DJ, but it was very chaotic and we ended up chatting up some new friends rather than get trampled on the dance floor. If you’re 23 and in LA for the first time, it’s definitely the place to be, but we’re 30 now (lol), so we’d give the edge to the jazz bar!

We slept in as much as possible the next day, but eventually packed up to explore Santa Monica. We’d only brought a small carry-on backpack with us, so we carried our stuff around with us on Sunday. We got coffee and pastries from a cute coffee shop nearby and started the day with a visit to the pier. It’s pretty cool, but neither of us was in the mood for rides, so we ended up walking the beach instead. We walked more than 7km on Sunday and stopped about halfway between Santa Monica and Venice (Oceanview Park) to search out a restaurant for lunch.

We stumbled upon a farmers market and Carolyn humoured me with visiting a few more bookstores. Venice Beach had a different vibe than Santa Monica for sure, but it was still a pretty neat place. We checked out the canals and then spent the rest of the afternoon lounging on the beach eating fruit before heading back to the airport for our return flight. So overall it was a very whirlwind trip – less than 48 hours in total – but I still feel like we got to see a bunch of things. We stuck to the most basic of attractions, but still caught a little bit of the flavour of the place. We made lots of friends while out partying, which really cemented LA as a much friendlier city than anticipated. I would visit again, but I’m not really in a rush. Maybe the next time Harry Styles plays the Kia Forum we’ll make a second attempt with better results. Fortunately neither of us are superfans, so the trip was far from ruined!

Strathcona Provincial Park

November 24, 2022November 24, 2022 / Maria / 1 Comment

Well, after my 8 post series on the Sunshine Coast Trail, I needed a little break, but now it’s time to catch up on the week I spent in Strathcona Provincial Park immediately after.

It’s unreal how many provincial parks we have in BC. Me and Brandon were all booked to hike the Skyline Trail in Jasper National Park in early September, but then 3 days before the trip we got an email from Parks Canada asking us not to come because of the wildfires. Technically our trail wasn’t closed, but the entire town of Jasper was without power and Parks Canada was encouraging people to cancel, so we listened and made other plans.

We floated around a lot of ideas for where to go instead, but we had so little time in which to execute the trip that a lot of them were quickly ruled out. Brandon suggested Strathcona Provincial Park, which has been on his bucket list for a long time, and it sounded like the perfect place to do a mix of front and backcountry camping with limited preparations. It was the second week of September, so fortunately the crowds were gone and we didn’t have to worry about reservations. We hoped on the ferry on Sunday morning to spend a week exploring the park!

First off, Strathcona Provincial Park is huge! There are other large provincial parks nearby, like Garibaldi, but Strathcona is largely accessible by car, so it gave us a lot of National Park vibes as we were driving through, though you can tell it receives much less funding than a National Park. It’s not so far from Vancouver that you couldn’t visit over a long weekend, but the size definitely warrants a longer trip. What makes it tricky is that it has multiple entrances and they are all very far away from each other. For example, there are some great trails that can be accessed through Mount Washington and Courtney, but we opted to skip these to focus on the core park area, which is closer to Gold River and a bit of a further drive.

The core area of the park is centralized around Buttle Lake, which extends from tip to toe of the park. There are tons of backcountry campsites, but only 2 frontcountry campgrounds, both located on the lake. The Buttle Lake Campground is at the top of the lake, while the Ralph River Campground is down closer to the bottom. We opted to start at Buttle Lake and spent our first night exploring around the lake. It was a bit smoky when we arrived and the water level of the lake was really low. We went for a walk from our campsite and were able to walk right on to Rainbow Island due to the low water level. There’s a marine backcountry site located on Rainbow Island and I’m now keen to return to Buttle Lake with my kayak because there are several marine sites located along the opposite shore of the lake that would be fun to explore!

Since there’s so much to do, we only spent one night at Buttle Lake before making an overnight trek up to Landslide Lake, which is one of Vancouver Islands most popular backcountry hikes! Landslide Lake is a 20km trek on the northwest side of the park that is best done over 1-2 nights. We opted for 1 night and day hiked from the campsite up to Landslide and Foster Lakes. There’s a lot to talk about between those 2 lakes, so I’m going to write a whole separate post about that hike!

After we finished the Landslide Lake hike, we decided to make a quick stop into Gold River to get lunch. It’s a tiny little town, but it has a lot of great eco tourism! It’s the launching spot if you’re doing the Nootka Trail, as well as if you’re doing any paddling around the coast. It has fishing and some great little tourist attractions if you’re just there for the day. We stopped into a little cafe for lunch and our waitress gave us a hot tip to check out the Heber River, which has the most beautiful little swimming hole! The water is vibrant blue and super clear, but boy is it cold! We both went for a dip, but it was a quick one!

After our swim we got another hot tip when we were stocking up at the liquor store about an easily accessible cave system. About 20 mins west of Gold River, there’s a small Rec Site called Upana Caves. It’s a network of caves with 4 that are easily accessible after only 10 minutes of walking – just make sure to bring your headlamp! I’m a bit of a chicken when it comes to caving, but Brandon convinced me to go into a few and we ended up spending an hour crawling around. Our favourite was the last cave in the system, Resurgence Cave, which has a little river flowing through it and is pretty scenic. A bit of a different activity for us, but well worth the detour!

Once we headed back into the park, we went on a bit of a tourist circuit of the easily accessible trails. There’s a ton of waterfalls in the park, most of which are located right off the highway. We stopped into Lady Falls, Lupin Falls, and Lower and Upper Myra Falls. Lower Myra Falls is definitely the shining gem of the park, so if you can’t get to them all, make sure you visit that one. You can swim in the falls, though it’s very cold. If you’re more adventurous, you can climb down from the falls to the bottom end of Myra Lake, which is a much nicer place to swim. Brandon and I had a proper bath here since we were in the park for a full week and neither of the campgrounds have showers.

Since Lower Myra Falls is located at the bottom of the park, we opted to stay at the Ralph River Campground for 2 nights. Some of the sites appear to be “lakefront” which had us excited, but because the water level was so low, it was much more of a swamp then we were anticipating. We lugged all our gear out to the “beach” one night to cook, which was still nice, but I wouldn’t recommend it as a good place for swimming! In our case it started raining on us in the middle of our meal, but we were troopers and stuck it out anyways.

The very end of the park is interesting because there’s actually an active mine right in the park! So a small part of the park is designated as “Strathcona-Westin Provincial Park”, which is basically just the extents of the mine. From what I understand, the mine already existed when they formed the park, so they let it continue operating. You actually have to drive right through it to get to some of the trailheads, including for Upper Myra Falls, so it’s an interesting experience!

We decided to finish the trip with a second overnight hike up to Bedwell Lake. It’s also a very popular hike and our plan was to do both Bedwell and Cream Lakes. Unfortunately, the weather didn’t really co-operate with us for this hike. It was really nice when we started, but it got foggier and foggier the closer we got to the lake. After talking to some other people, it sounds like most of the park was clear that day, but a bunch of clouds got hung up in our area and unfortunately, we couldn’t see a thing. But I’m also going to do a full post about Bedwell Lakes, because it was still an eventful trip, even with the odd weather.

We had planned to do one more hike in the park via Courtney on the way home, called Century Sam, but we got notice on the way to Courtney that the gate to the trailhead was closed. The road to the trail is on private property, so you are at the mercy of the property owners if you choose to visit that trail. There is no service anywhere in Strathcona Park, so be prepared for that when you visit.

The salmon were just starting to run when we were leaving the park, so we stopped along the river on our way out to watch people fishing and then hightailed it to the ferry when we heard Century Sam was closed. We ended up having a bit of a wait for the ferry, but were able to make it home the same night. So overall, I really liked Strathcona and I don’t think it’s a place I would likely have planned to visit without such an opportunity. That said, I left the park with even more trails on my bucket list then when I entered!