The long haul

No opportunity to blog yesterday as I was travelling. Naturally, the promised 'high speed wifi link' on the train didn't work, so I spent the first part of the journey listening to the party of three in front of me discussing, 'people I know who have died of cancer in the last six months and only survived for 7 weeks after diagnosis' (I managed not to leap across the aisle giving cries of, 'It's not necessarily a death sentence you know. Look at me - I survived it.'; I decided I really couldn't be bothered to deal with them. The next part of the journey was spent listening to details of a particularly awful relationship breakdown. Don't people realise that they're in a public place, I wonder? The last part of the journey was blissfully peaceful. Until I checked into the airport hotel and found a room that was swelteringly hot. When it hadn't cooled down at all five hours later, despite resetting the air con thermostat, I complained. A maintenance person arrived within 5 minutes (plus points obtained), clucked at the air con, said that it was cooler than it had been but that the only way to ensure the temperature dropped was to switch it off entirely, open the inside of the secondary glazing and prop the door to the corridor open. Not really advisable, it seems to me. I had a lovely time filling in the feedback form.

Today started well. The shuttle bus driver to Heathrow clearly wanted to be a stand up comedian and 'entertained' us all with unsuitable jokes and general insults. He did, however, heave suitcases around for us, which suited me, since my relationship with my back at present is delicate to the point that I'm not entirely sure that we're on speaking terms! Both security clearance and check-in were straightforward and speedy. The flight was good and the pilot suitably laconic. He really didn't sound happy in his work, '(big sigh) We arrive in Helsinki in 30 minutes. It's snowing (massive sigh). The temperature is -4C (sigh).  We should arrive on time (deep and meaningful sigh)'. In fact, we did arrive on time, though we were held in cloud for about 20 minutes, something I really don't like, before being decanted into a bus and driven to the terminal across a layer of new snow at breakneck speed.

Onto the free (please note London Heathrow hotels!) airport hotel shuttle bus and to our overnight hotel which offers free, good quality wifi and has extremely helpful staff.

After checking in, we headed off to Helsinki to admire that Capital of Design 2012.. It was snowing lightly and the roads were covered with compacted snow. The driver didn't bother to slow down and we hurtled into the city...