Suomenlinna Fortress Island In March

I've never visited Suomenlinna in the winter. I have visited it many times in June and once in April.

I received a gift card from my employer this week. It was redeemable in a number of restaurants, only one of which was where we live and we preferred sushi/Asian this time, so we decided to drive down to a giant shopping mall in Vantaa. From there, we continued to Suomenlinna in Helsinki.

Here are some of the photos I took.

Helsinki Cathedral from the ferry. A few hundred people live in Suomenlinna and it is a regular city district and the ferry is part of the public transport network and thus cheap to take to the island. If the island merely a tourist attraction, the ferry ride would've surely have been more expensive than a little shy of three euros per person.

The southern port is from where these two Stockholm ferries depart from. The Viking Line ferry to Tallinn also departs from here.

These two buildings have restaurants in them that are open in the summer.

This is the Naval Academy on Suomenlinna, which is actually four islands close together and connected by bridges.

This is presumably someone's summer cabin. There is no peace, however, as thousands of onlookers pass by it every single day.

Those buildings are on one of the islands. They are residential. There are bicycles on racks in front of the entrances.

I suppose that's an old armoury or an ammo dump of some sort.

Quite a contrast. Those towers are a few kilometers to the north of here.

We have arrived in Suomenlinna. The ferry trip did not take longer than 15 minutes.

This is the Main Gate.

Suomenlinna Church

Russian merchants' houses

The local microclimate is unkind to the exteriors.

More residential buildings

Someone's backyard

This is the bridge between the northern and the southern of the main islands. The building on the left is the tourist information center.

Silja Line on its way to Stockholm

A WW2 era submarine

Suomenlinna has one of the oldest dry docks still in operation in the world. Its construction began in 1750. Traditional wooden ships and boats are maintained and repaired in it.

Nice colors, aren't they?

Just on time for the ferry back to the city. It was cold and we needed to get back home soon enough.

Arriving from Tallinn

Not too long until sunset

It's following us!

A lonely house. Maybe not. Centrally located but not very accessible.

A lighthouse on Harmaja

The sun would set soon. Although March is clearly a winter month, days are much longer than in December.