Helsinki: public transport

Dear Reader,

As you probably know by now, when I travel I like to do it cheaply. I have never been a fan of these “Hop on Hop off” buses or other sightseeing tours since my motto is that seeing a city on foot is the best, and these tours cost an insane amount of money.

Recently I visited Helsinki with my family, and when doing my research one of the things that kept popping up was to take tram number 2 through the city instead of a sightseeing bus. This, of course, made me excited since it is cheap and interesting.

Tickets

Now comes the little harder part. Trying to figure out how the public transport system works in a different country is always challenging, but thank god today we have the internet. After googling I found out there are single tickets and daily tickets. The single tickets cost somewhere between 2.50 to 3.20 Euros depending on where you buy them (these are only valid for one hour after purchase), while the day card costs 9.00 Euros for 1 day. You can get these tickets at any of the bus or train stations that have machines. As of 01.02.2018, you can no longer purchase tickets on the bus or tram.

We ended up getting daily tickets which are 9.00 Euros for adults and 4.50 for children under 15. These are valid for all the buses, metros, and trams in Helsinki for 24 hours after first use and is even valid for the ferry to Suomenlinna.

Trams

Since we had these one day passes we went around the whole day more or less. In Helsinki, trams do this interesting thing that instead of turning around them sometimes just change into a different number and keep going. So for example, we were sitting on tram number 2 and then we were suddenly sitting on tram number 7. This may be confusing at the beginning but you get used to it very easily.

I cannot attest to busses or metros since we only used the teams, but those were very frequent and on time. They were clean and spacious and on floor level so easy to access with strollers or for elderly people as well. They announce the stops in both Finnish and Swedish, so you will have two chanced to remember if that is your stop or not.

All in all, taking public transport in Helsinki is relatively easy and accessible. I enjoyed using it and it made sightseeing a lot more interesting.

Hope this guide helped you on your trip.

Kisses,

Juli

*Disclaimer, any prices mentioned in this post are as of posting date. I am trying to keep it up to date, but please double check before your trip.