Sauna is a Finnish tradition – a hot room with stove. For stove you throw water and the room gets even hotter. Finnish word Löyly means the steam and heat which comes from stove when you throw water. Almost all Finnish houses have sauna – Finns like to visit sauna at least once a week – some people visit sauna almost daily. It is quite usual that apartments have shared sauna and one can book weekly time for visiting sauna. Also many apartments have tiny sauna by their own.
In history there were many public saunas in Helsinki since not so many apartments had bathrooms and definitely no saunas in apartments. For decades number of public saunas decreased (since people got saunas by their own) but laterly there has been new bloom of public saunas. I guess people like sense of community nowadays. For that need latest bloomer in public sauna field is Sauna called Löyly. It was just opened few weeks ago and it is situated next to see in Southern Helsinki.
Löyly is both, public sauna and restaurant. When you want to visit Löyly’s sauna, you have to have swimming suit with you. Otherwise you don’t need anything special – towels are included for the entrance fee (19 euros). Some instructions for first time visitors: first you pay entrance fee, then you go to changing room (there are also lockers where you can leave your stuff). There are separate changing rooms for women and men. After changing for swimming suit you go to shower and then you can choose which of two saunas you want to visit first: there is both “basic” sauna and smoke sauna. After being in sauna for few minutes, you probably want to visit terrace, pop in sea (there is possibility to swim but the sea is very cold so you don’t want to do that for a long time) or buy something to drink. There is also a room with fire place for taking brakes. All that is possible before visiting saunas again. When I visited sauna some days ago, the day was pretty cold. However, that didn’t stop me visiting the sea several times! There were also some tourists passing by and taking pictures of us “crazy Finns” swimming even such a cold day. Entrance fee for sauna enables you to use sauna facilities for 2 hours.
To see this fascinting building and excellent views from terrace you don’t have to visit saunas – if you prefer, you can visit only the restaurant or terrace (no entrance fee then). Restaurant is not fancy in any means but anyway really nice. I tasted burger and it was tasty. Terrace is big and has truly excellent views as mentioned earlier. I can warmly recommend the place for everyone – you can experience Finnish tradition in downtown Helsinki! If you want to be asolutely sure to have sauna experience, I recommend you to make booking in advance. And how do you find the place? The address is Hernesaarenranta 4. It is situated in southern Helsinki – I guess around 2 kilometres from Railway station. You can take bus number 14 if you don’t want to walk there.
Great sauna-moments for all of you. You surely understand I couldn’t take pictures in sauna, so that you have to see by your own.
Anna
LivinginHEL 