About this site

Who writes here

My name is Eeva-Liisa Nyberg. I grew up in Katajanokka, within sight of the ferry berths, and I now live further along the shore in Eira. For nine summers I worked at a kiosk on the Market Square quay, on the stretch where the sightseeing boats tie up. I sold tickets, I pointed at the water, and I answered the same six questions until I could hear them coming.

Nine seasons is enough to see the whole range. The couple who arrived at the public ferry gate holding a cruise booking, ten minutes before their sailing, on the other side of the square. The people who queued for the last ferry back on a July Sunday and did not expect a queue. The sundeck emptying the moment the boat left the shelter of the islands, every single time, because the wind across the open water at Market Square is real even in June. The gulls taking food straight off the terrace tables. And the November afternoon when the only boat still running was the Suomenlinna ferry, and a visitor with a two-day trip wanted to know where the archipelago cruises had gone.

Why the site exists

Because the same three confusions happened at that kiosk every week, and none of them needed to.

The first is the big one. In Helsinki the water is public transport, and the ferry to Suomenlinna is not a tour. It is a tram that floats. It leaves from the eastern side of Market Square, directly in front of the Presidential Palace, it crosses in 15 minutes, it runs every day of the year from early morning until late at night, and an ordinary HSL AB ticket valid 90 minutes covers it — the same ticket that works on the tram. People pay for a “Helsinki boat tour” expecting to be put ashore at the fortress, and get a sightseeing loop that never lands. Other people queue for the public ferry expecting commentary and a bar. Separating those two things is the most useful thing this site does, and it is on the ferry page and again on where the boats leave from.

The second is that a sightseeing boat mostly does not land anywhere. The archipelago loops go out through the channels between the islands, show you the city front and the fortress walls from the water, and bring you back to the quay you left from. That is the product. It is not island hopping and it is not a way of reaching a museum. It is also genuinely good value for what it is, and I say why on is it worth it. If you want to get off somewhere, that is island hopping, which uses different boats.

The third is the season. The sightseeing fleet runs roughly May to September. The bus-and-boat ticket runs 2 May to 30 September. JT-Line’s island boats go to fixed dates. Out of season what is left is the Suomenlinna ferry and the international ships, and somebody planning a November trip needs to hear that before they build a day around a cruise. That is boat tours in winter and the best time to visit.

What this site is not

Not official anything. I do not speak for HSL, for JT-Line, for the ferry lines or for any sightseeing operator. I am not a guide and I run no tours. If the wind gets up on your date I cannot move it, and if the fleet has stopped for the winter I cannot start it. Nobody sees a page here before it goes up.

I do not name the sightseeing companies, on purpose. Which operator you sail with is not the decision that goes wrong; which pier you stand on is. So I name the piers, and I name the ferry lines — Tallink Silja, Viking Line, Eckerö Line — along with HSL and JT-Line, because those determine which terminal you walk into and that is information you actually need.

I am opinionated about two things and I will not pretend otherwise. Coats, because I watched nine summers of sundecks empty at the same point in the route. And departure points, because the wrong quay cost more people their boat than the weather ever did. That is what to wear and where the boats leave from, and they are the two pages I would press into a stranger’s hand.

How it is written

In the first person, because a person wrote it, and with the unflattering half of the answer first wherever there is one. The ninety-minute loop does not land and I say so at the top of its page rather than the bottom. The evening cruise is the lowest-rated boat on the site and its review opens with the number and then explains it. Where a listing has twenty-two reviews rather than two thousand, I say so in the first paragraph.

Ratings and review counts are the published GetYourGuide figures noted at my last reading; the booking panels show the live ones, and they move. Quotes from reviewers are their words, kept short, and no guide is named. The six reviews are on the reviews hub.

I publish no prices anywhere on this site, in any form. Amounts change every season and a figure left on a page is wrong within months, in five languages at once. What does not change is the structure of a day on the water: what is a city ticket, what is a separate product, what is free. That is what it costs, and it has no figures in it on purpose.

How it is funded

Through affiliate links to GetYourGuide. If you book a boat through a link here, the site earns a commission and you pay no more than you otherwise would. It costs me nothing to tell you that the Suomenlinna ferry is a city ticket, that Seurasaari is reached on foot over a bridge, and that a lot of the best of this city is free, and I have said all three. That should tell you what the commission does and does not buy. The full statement is on the disclosure page.

Corrections

Seasons shift, piers get rebuilt, timetables change and I get things wrong. If you have just been and something here is out of date, write to me at [email protected] and I will fix it. The contact page says what is useful to include.