Very easy to get to from the City Center. You take #16 bus from central station and the last stop…read morebefore it heads back is the zoo. You can pay on the bus and it does not take very long. In the summer, you can take a boat but this was not an option in April when I visited. The main gate has a little cafeteria and bathroom. The zoo is located on an island and you walk across a bridge to get to the zoo. It is not a large zoo. It has a good number of animals to see. I really enjoyed the seeing the lions. I spent about 2 hours here and pretty much saw everything. It was not very crowded at all. Check what time of the year you are visiting. The weather was still chilly in April and only 1 restaurant was open. The gift shop was open but did not offer to much. The only item I found that said Helsinki Zoo was a postcard. Most of the items on sale are pretty generic non-branded animal related items. Overall, it was a nice visit.

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my…read more As far as zoos go, this one is pretty good. While parking is not precisely convenient, you do get a nice little walk through the woods to arrive there a gigantic bear statue greets you. Unlike say, Berlin, you get the sense that these animals have plenty of space and are generally weather appropriate. I really enjoyed the information (in three languages, Finnish, Swedish, and English) about what level of threatened / endangered a particular animal is in the wild and what efforts this zoo is taking to help the natural environment. The cafes are well located throughout the zoo and the organization makes sense as well. Some odd (to me) bits. The jungle house (tropical house) has a weird insect area that looks like it was built a very long time ago and the insects have just been left to themselves. Creepy crawly indeed. The other odd bit if there are at least a dozen peacocks roaming free around the zoo. I don't know why. They are loud and not afraid of people and sometimes block entire paths with strutting. It's just weird to have so many peacocks in a relatively small space. As an added bonus we visited during hatching season so if you happened across a goose who was still sitting on her nest then her mate would hiss at you and sometimes try to chase you off the path. A bit silly but you know, nice that they all have somewhere to nest (I guess?!?) Definitely a nice half day for families with small children.

Sea Life is located in the premises of an amusement park - Linnanmäki - which has a long tradition…read moreso the aquarium has had to use the available space creatively. It's a nice, even if a bit pricy place to spend a few quality hours with kids and for a marine novice like me, the amount of fish to view is sufficient and then some. The staff was very friendly and even though, quite unfortunately, our stroller had been borrowed from the leave-at-your-own-risk outside clothes area, they found it very quickly and were very polite about it all the way. Having said that, it would not hurt to have a little better organised area to leave the jackets and such since especially in the autumn and winter time, the kids visiting are wearing layers of clothes, many of them very similar and the unsupervised clothes area looks like a daycare entrance on steroids. All in all, perhaps not world class as an aquarium but certainly fun for a rainy day. Even very small kids seemed to enjoy this place, although the downstairs area where the fish is located, is not very good for buggies and strollers especially if they're anything bigger than the traveling kind.

From the owner: Merimaailma SEA LIFE on Suomen johtava akvaario ja yksi Helsingin suosituimmista elämyskohteista…read more SEA LIFE tarjoaa kävijöille elämyksiä ja tietoa vedenalaisesta elämästä ja sen suojelun tärkeydestä. SEA LIFEssa vierailee noin 250 000 kävijää vuosittain. SEA LIFE on osa Merlin Entertainmentsin omistamaa Euroopan-laajuista SEA LIFE -ketjua, joka on maailman suurin yleisöakvaariotuotemerkki. Merlin Entertainments on maailman toiseksi suurin elämyskohdetoimija yli 100 elämyskohteella neljällä mantereella ja 23 eri maassa.