Helsinki Cathedral

- and another one in extras.

A slightly stressful flight with Finnair - I’d booked months ago, went to check in online yesterday to find I couldn’t as we were “on standby”. I spoke to the airline who said it was because the flight was full - I’ve been on plenty of full flights before and smelt a rat. I suggested that perhaps the flight was overbooked - oh no, of course not! I was told to check in as normal at the airport - we did (super early of course!) to be met with sharp intakes of breath, muttering behind pillars and scratching of heads from the check in staff. We’d been bumped from the flight because it was overbooked - this was said loudly so the whole queue could hear - and as we had the cheapest tickets (bought from Finnair at the price they asked me to pay on the website! - what was I going to insist I paid more?) we were off. After much faffing about and serious temper keeping from me they got us on the flight - all sat separately - grrr, poor Sarah. At the gate they stopped me from boarding, yet more muttering and whispering from the staff but I did get eventually on. Fortunately Sarah was seated with a lovely family who were kind to her. That’s me done with Finnair. Well until Thursday when we have two flights with them!

Anyway we are here, the hotel is perfect, we have eaten a lovely dinner and mooched about this lovely city and are settled in for the night; a full day of sight-seeing tomorrow before we get the overnight train to Lapland.

It’s nowhere near as cold as expected. We are very overdressed!