Helsinki

Helsinki solved the problem of the northern soul with two tools: design and steam. The city that gave the world its most serene chairs and glassware also maintains a sauna for every mood of the sea — smoke saunas, harbor saunas, a public one built into a power-plant chimney — on the theory, so far unrefuted, that there is no weather a hot room and cold water cannot answer.

The sensible traveller starts at the Senate Square's white cathedral — Petersburg neoclassicism with better coffee —, works down through the Design District's studios, and eats herring and squeaky cheese at the market hall by the harbor. The ferry to Suomenlinna, the sea fortress spread across six islands, is the city's best fifteen minutes afloat. End at Löyly's sauna terraces: bake, plunge into the Baltic, feel briefly immortal.

The Guide's honesty: Finns are the happiest people on Earth and will not perform it — silence here is comfort, not coldness —; the sauna has etiquette: shower first, sit on the towel, and conversation is optional but honesty in it is not; and in June the sun barely sets: bring the eye mask, skip the alarm.