Helsinki, Finland • fazer.com

As a chocolate lover, one of my favorite places so far in Finland is this wonderful place called the Karl Fazer Cafe.  Fazer is one of Finland’s largest chocolate companies, similar to Belguim’s Godiva or America’s Ghirardelli.  It was founded by Karl Fazer in 1891 when he opened a cafe in Helsinki.  Today Fazer has almost 1,400 restaurants in 7 countries and their products are sold to 27 countries.  Their flagship store, right off the Esplanade Park in downtown Helsinki, is fantastic.  Complete with Fazer’s famous hot chocolate, a large selection of desserts, ice cream, and all different kinds of Fazer chocolate, it is like a dessert-aholic’s cafe dream come true!  Continue Reading...

Greetings from Helsinki, Finland!

Helsinki’s Esplanade Park

The company I work for has its European headquarters here so once a year, I get to travel across the globe to work with the team over here.  I arrived earlier today (hence no blog posts the past two days) and am staying until Friday, at which point I’ll be heading to London to visit my friend, Ashley who has lived there for the past 3 years. 

After I took a quick nap and grabbed dinner near Helsinki’s beautiful Esplanade Park, I was ready to treat myself to this awesome chocolate cafe called Fazer, one of Finland’s largest chocolatiers.  Their cafe is very cool, with tons of different kinds of chocolate, lots of desserts and coffee drinks.  Although the sun never really sets this time of year (the country is so far north, it only really becomes “dusk” but it never really dark – like right now it is 10pm and it looks more like 3pm), everything here seems to close at 6pm on Sundays.  As I was still really craving some of their delicious chocolate, I headed to a little convenience store where I picked up one of Fazer’s chocolate bars – “Geisha” which is milk chocolate with a soft hazelnut filling.  It is so good!  Continue Reading...