If you want to buy kitchy souvenirs, get ice-cream-robbed by an arrogant seagull and have your bag cleaned by pickpockets, you should head to Kauppatori Market Square. If you want to experience a real market square where the local people do their market transactions, you should head to Hakaniemi Market Square or the small and intimate Töölö Market Square.
In a normal market square, like the one in Hakaniemi, people sell vegetables, berries, mushrooms, flowers, pastries and maybe some handicrafts. And naturally there are a couple of tent cafés serving coffee, sandwiches, pancakes, salmon soup and doughnut pigs (munkkipossu), a big doughnut filled with jam. If you’re visiting the right café in right time, you might be able enjoy an accordion performance, a small brass band or a retired make-up artist singing tango.
Hakaniemi market square is one of my favourite places to visit on Saturday mornings. I might have my second breakfast there: a bowl of rice porridge with cinnamon and sugar, or a cup of coffee and a salmon sandwich. In the summer this is the place to get the strawberries.
150 meters from Hakaniemi metro station
50 meters from Hakaniemi tram stop (trams 3, 6, 7, 9)
Closest city bike station: Hakaniemen metroasema (040)
Staycation in Helsinki 
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