Helsinki Ice bars

[Goring Gull]

Any good - I'm off too Helsinki at the end of November for a few days have seen these Ice bars has anyone been and are they any good or a tourist trap rip off. Will also get the ferry across to Tallinn at some point anything i should do as a must see there?

 

[blackprince]

Was in Helsinki during June (this year).

The ice bar is in Yliopistonkatu which is just off Senate Square which is dominated by the pure white Lutheran cathedral. As you look at the front of the cathedral, there is a small building on either side at the top of the steps. Yliopistonkatu is opposite the side of the left hand small building.
As you walk down Yliopistonkatu the ice bar is on the other side of the road to the Sokos Hotel. From memory it is open from about 4pm to 1am Wednesday to Sunday. I'm sure it was closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. I didn't go inside but did talk to an English tourist standing outside who had just come out. He said that it cost the equivalent of £10 to get, could only hold approximately 12 to 15 people at a time and that the recommended maximum time inside was less than 60 minutes due to the cold.
They were the things that stuck in my mind, I can't remember what he said about the price of the drinks in the club although if they are anything like the rest of Scandinavia they will be expensive. A glass of beer in a pub or club costs from £5 upwards. If you want to purchase alcohol in a supermarket or convenience store they only sell beer or cider. Anything stronger can only be obtained from state run Alko stores which close by 9pm. You need to be over 20 to purchase alcohol from any type of store (ID is required) and some pubs and restaurants impose a much higher minimum age of 30.

 

[Trufflehound]

The ice bar is in Yliopistonkatu

That's easy for you to say...

 

[gruntage]

I went in one on a friends advice a few weeks ago. Awful. Save your cash, Helsinki is already overtly expensive. I was there for 3 days... I saw the 'sights' in a day. I don't want to slag the place off, but there isn't much to see. I'd recommend a day trip/over night to Tallinn, awesome city. Or catch a ferry to st. Petersburg - no visa needed for a short trip. Porvoo is a little closer though and somewhere I wish I'd made it to.

 

[Safeway]

The Olympic Stadium is worth a visit. Got an observation tower which for a couple of Euros gives you cracking views over the whole city.

The zoo is a waste of time as it's so cold all the animals just sit huddled in their enclosures.

 

[mcshane in the 79th]

Ice bars are really really pointless.

 

[Acker79]

I've been to two, I think one of them may have been the original one - in Sweden? I mean it was definitely in sweden (well, the swedish part of lapland) I'm not sure if it was the original one, it was part of the famous ice hotel there. The shot glasses are made of ice and you have to pay for the glass, too. But you can re-use it, so the challenge is to get as many drinks from one glass as you can (if you reuse a glass, the drink is cheaper).

I also went to one in the finland part of lapland, at an ice village.

It's an impressive architectural feat, but not sure it's a blowaway experience.

 

[middletoenail]

Forget about Helsinki, if you have more time a great place to head to is Lahti, sporting capital of Finland and hometown of Jari Litmanen. It is situated on the southern tip of Vesijarvi (huge lake which has some fantastic summer cottages on it). Approx 1 hour from Helsinki.

 

[fataddick]

There's ice bars bloody everywhere now. London, Paris, Dublin, Copenhagen, Reykjavik, Stockholm, etc. Pretty much every European capital has one, based on the original concept from the ice hotel in Kiruna in the far North of Sweden. I've only been to Reykjavik and Stockholm's, but apparently they're all much of a muchness. Located in five star hotels, usually sponsored by a vodka brand (Absolut or Smirnoff, I guess the Helsinki one is probably Finlandia). It's just an industrial freezer kept just below freezing, you pay about ten quid, they lend you a gay looking silver cape and gloves to wear, you stand around a few blocks of ice (there's no seats) having your one free drink - vodka and mixer served in a block of ice, as the nine or ten other people in there (they tend to have a capacity of 15-20 at a push), who will all be annoying loud foreign students, take photos of each other. Then you leave, having wasted half an hour of your life purely for the benefit of being able to bore friends with the pointless anecdote of "when I went to an ice bar". The end.

 

[Acker79]

I've got some photos of the ones I went to (with seats), I'll post them this evening.

 

[Gazwag]

It's an impressive architectural feat, but not sure it's a blowaway experience.

I would imagine its too bloody cold for that

 

[Acker79]

I would imagine its too bloody cold for that

Experiences with an ex-girlfriend and snowy outdoors would suggest it's never too cold...

 

[Acker79]

From Finland:

Sweden:

Cubicle bench

More Seats:

Game Table:

Drink Menu:

Northern Lights:

How they deal with spillages:

 

[Goring Gull]

Cheers for that

 

[Trufflehound]

Looks like that person's been in there a few days too long...

Or are they on the toilet?

 

[Acker79]

Heh. It's just an ice wall around the table, that person is walking behind it.

 

[ManxSeagull]

There's ice bars bloody everywhere now. London, Paris, Dublin, Copenhagen, Reykjavik, Stockholm, etc. Pretty much every European capital has one, based on the original concept from the ice hotel in Kiruna in the far North of Sweden. I've only been to Reykjavik and Stockholm's, but apparently they're all much of a muchness. Located in five star hotels, usually sponsored by a vodka brand (Absolut or Smirnoff, I guess the Helsinki one is probably Finlandia). It's just an industrial freezer kept just below freezing, you pay about ten quid, they lend you a gay looking silver cape and gloves to wear, you stand around a few blocks of ice (there's no seats) having your one free drink - vodka and mixer served in a block of ice, as the nine or ten other people in there (they tend to have a capacity of 15-20 at a push), who will all be annoying loud foreign students, take photos of each other. Then you leave, having wasted half an hour of your life purely for the benefit of being able to bore friends with the pointless anecdote of "when I went to an ice bar". The end.

I couldn't have summed it up better, although we paid more than £10 per person. We went to the ice bar in Sharm el Shiek in August.