Holiday Brunch

7 months ago I booked a surprise holiday for The Boy for our 10th anniversary.  He knew when we were going away and that it would be cold but that was it.  Well this morning it arrived.  We got the 9:30am bus to the airport with my excitement building.  I got our bags dropped (with a walk-by IDing from the helpful BA staff so G didn't find out where we were going) and then it was on to security.

Edinburgh Airport security is REALLY thorough!  Liquids out, tablets out, jackets off, pockets emptied.  We both set off the metal detector, I'd left my belt and fitbit on and G was wearing his steelies so it was hardly surprising.  Belts off, boots off, jewellery off and into the body scanner.  Not satisfied with that we both got a very thorough pat down before we were free to go.  Both our bags got shunted as well, G's due to an invalid image being taken and mine because I had both of our liquid bags!  I needed a good cuppa by the time all that was over so we headed to our usual brunch stop of The Gathering.  Eggs Benedict for G and the veggie breakfast for me.  I couldn't have the Tattie Scone so the waiter suggested a tasty substitution of bacon! Yum!

I had to remind him not to look at the departure screens as it's force of habit.  The problem with everything being in my head is that I was the one in charge.  Gate 6, great, I'll just nip to the loo... and then start heading to Gate 3.  Thankfully Edinburgh Airport is small enough that when I realised my mistake it didn't delay us too much. My number confusion continued when I sat us in row 5 not 6, not a great start for pursuading G I was in control.

We collected our bags at Heathrow and took the Express to Terminal 3 to check in again.  After the Edinburgh bag drop ID issues I took him with me but as I handed over the documentation was very clear that it was a surprise and not to mention the destination.  This caused problems when trying to confirm if our bags were being checked to the first or second location and the surprise was nearly blown when a colleague attempted to be helpful.

At T3 we decided to have a tea break and headed to Rhubarb, it was nice and quite so we ended up staying for a glass of wine, dinner and another huge pot of tea before it was time to head to our Gate.  The gate helped me get him on to the plane before he found out the destination as they had a holding pen that you could go to before boarding and there were no monitors or announcements in this area.  On the plane though he couldn't help but hear the announcement that we were headed for Helsinki.

An unventful but tiring flight saw us arrive at Helsinki at 12:20am (local time).  We got our bags and headed to the Glo Hotel in the basement.  No windows but who needs them when you're just laying your head between flights!