"It's a different kind of cold.' My arse!


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February 9th 2017
Published: February 9th 2017
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Finland Day 1



"It's a different kind of cold.' My arse!



They always say it don't they 'It's a different kind of cold.' What does that even mean before we get into the basic fact that minus 9 is still flipping cold even without the wind chill factor?? You're still chilled to the bone and at one point I almost considered putting a hat on. Okay so that was at the point when Claire threatend to tell my Mum of me but hey. Even the sea is frozen so that's pretty damned cold whatever type of cold it is.



Anyway we're in Finland and the trip was a present for my latest significant birthday last year from Claire. We woke at 2am and drove over 300 miles to Gatwick before the usual dipsticks had chance to morph the M25 into its prejorative state of being a car park. This meant we had time for breakfast at Wagamamas which is always a good start. The 2am start meant I slept more on this flight than I have ever slept on a plane. I even missed take off!



I don't know a lot about Finland or many famous Finns. I know some Finnish sportsmen, Lordi and of course Santa Claus-the latter two hang out where we're going tomorrow Rovaniemi. But day 1 has been spent in Helsinki where I googled famous Finns and din't come back with much I'm afraid. But when you've got Lordi and Santa do you really need more??



The trip originally meant an overnight stay in Helsinki with no time to sightsee but Claire wangled things around (probably expensively) so we've had some time to see some stuff today. What we didn't expect to be able to do was wander round most of the city in about an hour. Helsinki is quite small and doesn't appear to have many points of interest as in famous buildings, architecture etc. It's all nicely designed, clean and pleasant but there's no equivalent of say the Tower of London or Notre Dame etc.



There are some nice old buildings, the frozen harbour is worth a look and the Russian church is a must see. And then you realise that you've already walked from one end of the centre to the other so it must be time to eat. And that it must be time for a sushi burrito.....



Now that's what I call fusion! We found Soma that we'd been intrigued by earlier and Claire was impressed that they had vegan dishes even though we couldn't tell what was in them. And yes it was all wrapped up in a sushi roll but huge and very very nice. Expensive of course. But nice.



The English spoken here betrays no hint of a Scandanavian accent in a lot of cases and, apart from unfortunate American twangs, is spot on. Their teaching of English must be better than our teaching of French! The receptionist at our hotel does have a Scandanavian accent but he is still rather eloquent despite him looking and acting like a Thunderbirds puppet. Oops, I'd better not mention the name of the hotel now. Don't want to upset the poor bloke as he's very helpful and friendly.



Anyway, after food Claire wanted to find a metal bar she'd read about....hmmm....maybe that should read Metal bar or even METAL bar? Anyway it's a bar called Bakkari that plays metal music as opposed to a bit of iron hanging around the streets. We found it and it was okay. It wasn't very warm and the barman wore a woolly hat and even a coat at times but it was clean and the music wasn't too loud and they actually played some music I liked.



The drinks prices weren't as extortionate as we'd been lead to believe but the coffee was foul, turgid stuff. It took ages to make and it was brought to me in a glass before he piled some milk out of a carton into it. The second round I had cola and he put loads of ice in it-it's minus 9, why would I want ice in my drink??



There were some real Finns in there Claire said but she hasn't really explained what fake Finns are or what she's got against them. The toilets had a subtle (see pictures) hint to indicate the different sexes as relevant genitalia had been drawn on the respective doors....nice....



It had been a very long day so it was time to head back to the hotel so Claire could ask Joe 90 where the snow from the pavements had gone. (Underground heating-piped hot water don't ya know?!) And then back to our room with free hot drinks and much nicer coffee than we paid for earlier. And blog writing. Always blog writing.



And luckily we check each other's blogs so I can see what I've missed. I've missed out the fact that we are already criminals in Finland are are pretty much on the lamb. Not intentionally. But still. Without meaning to we are fare dodgers.



The ticket machines don't take cash and the instructions said we could pay the conductor on the train. Who never showed up. What are you supposed to do?? Yes we slunk off feeling a bit guilty, a bit smug and very punk rock.


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