Trip to Finland, 1

We left on June 30th. June 29th was the day Jerry and Rosemary arrived from Montana. On the 30th, we flew from Washington Dulles, all the way to Charles de Gaulle. The flight was 8 hours long, but filled with movies, tv shows, excellent food, free wine, blankets and pillows. At CDG, we had to run the gauntlet on our way to the Finnair flight we had to catch. We went through passport control and also a security checkpoint. Dad and Patti were on the flight to Helsinki. They barely made it with only an hour layover at CDG. Finnair food is not good. Don't bother with it. Nice staff though. When I started seeing tiny islands off Helsinki, with wee sailboats floating nearby, I felt like Fantasy Island couldn't be far.

I'd like to spend more time in Helsinki at some point. We had an afternoon, between about 3pm and 10pm, when we could stroll, buy train tickets (thanks, Dad!), accidentally run into cousin Elaine, and just generally wish that we could take an earlier train. We had reservations for sleeping compartments on the 22:23 thanks to Reijo, but it was a long time to wait for it. I slept well on the train, and I enjoyed the novelty of it, but not everyone was happy. J and R had somebody knocking on their door all night. Kemi station came at 9 o'clock in the morning on July 2nd, and we were surprised to see, not just Oskar from Avis car rental, but also Ilpo, Tarja and Reijo. Hurray! We moved into Ilpo and Merja's summer house, and proceeded to be amazed by the ever-present sunshine. We never seemed to know what time it was, while we were in the Tornio valley.