Departure

Why do I always organise flights that mean I have to get up at stupid o’clock in the morning? Half three this time. As always, I packed the car the night before so it was just a case of rousing a sleepy Pete and Leanne and bundling them into the car to head for Heathrow. We met Kate and Dannie at the airport and were soon on our way north to Helsinki.

The plan was, with a morning flight we’d have time in the afternoon to see the sights of Helsinki before heading to Kotka in the morning. We picked up the hire car without a hitch and more amazingly managed to get five big bags, a wheelchair, five little bags and five people into it. The drive into Helsinki was not without incident due to rubbish map reading from the back plus Helsinki roads being very confusing. Every time there was a shout to turn right from the back it was met with either a ‘no right turn’ sign or even worse a ‘no entry’ sign. Eventually, and somewhat miraculously we found a hotel with SCANDIC at the top. We turned into the hotel and started to unload when we discovered that it was the wrong Scandic hotel. Thankfully the other one was only about five minutes away. This took about half an hour thanks to more no right turns and no entry signs but eventually we got to the right place.

Why do I always organise flights that mean I have to get up at stupid o’clock in the morning?

The hotel was very nice and our room was good although a little crammed with all five of us in there. Pete and I played the age cards and got the nice beds! We unpacked and decided to head out for a walk. We were close in to the centre so wandered out and immediately got too tired and found ourselves a little café to sit down for a drink. We were all feeling pretty worn out from our early starts but managed to rouse ourselves to wander more. We got down to the harbour and found a boat tour which took us round the harbour. It seemed like a good way to see the city without having to stretch ourselves. I confess I wouldn’t know much about it because I slept through most of it!!

We headed back to the hotel for dinner (Reindeer steak for me!) and crashed out.