Back from Helsinki, Finland!

In case you've been wondering where I've been for the past 10+ days, I made a last minute trip to Helsinki, Finland with my husband!    He had to go for business meetings, while I decided to tag along for fun :)  

Luckily my parents were able to watch the kids during the trip because there was no way we could have afforded tickets for all of us on such last minute notice.  On top of that, I think it would have been difficult to see as much as I did had I brought them along.  I imagine they would have slept past noon and been up all night and I can't see them having much patience for walking around the big museums.

I could have called this a "business trip" of my own since I really focused on finding all the great places to eat healthy Vegan food!  In the next round of posts I'll be showing you all the great places I found during my 10 day stay in beautiful Helsinki.  I've been there in the Winter and in the Spring back in my college days.  And while winter has a certain charm, early summer allows for longer days to explore and less layers of clothing :)

If I had to rate the city on it's ease of eating a Vegan diet, I would give it a high rating.  I think an 8 out of 10 is fair.  There are plenty of outdoor and indoor markets that have produce and other vegan food products.  There are several health food stores and at least one health food chain.  There are many ethnic restaurants that have vegan and vegetarian offerings on their menu. There are at least two all vegan places to eat.  Restaurants were all very accommodating when I asked up front for a vegan meal when there was clearly nothing on the menu.  I was even surprised at one experience, where they didn't have a single vegan item on the menu and came up with a vegan dish made with tofu on the fly!

I hope you enjoy reading my posts, even if you don't think you'll be going to Finland anytime soon...