Europe

We had a relatively early night last night and were still asleep this morning at about 8:30am when an announcement came over the hotel PA system to inform us that there was a technical issue that the hotel staff were looking into.

We decided we’d better jump up and get organised, just in case we had to leave our room quickly. It was then that we discovered that the “technical issue” was that the hotel had no power. So, we just opted to go back to bed! We eventually got up and got organised to get down to breakfast before it finished at 10:00am.

Over a nice breakfast we discussed what we might do for the day. In the end, we decided that we’d do very little! After 15 days of on-the-go travelling, we felt like we needed a slow day. And Helsinki is a nice place to have a slow day. In fact, on our first European family holiday back in 2005, we went flat out for nearly a month before collapsing in a bit of heap here in Helsinki as well. It must be the calming Nordic influence of the city!

After breakfast we spent a bit of time in the room, relaxing and catching up on a few e-mails. By lunchtime the temperature had risen to -3C (from -6C earlier in the morning) so we decided to rug up and go for a walk. We did a little bit of shopping while we were out and headed back to the hotel mid-afternoon. We ventured out again late in the afternoon for a very nice afternoon tea and a little more shopping. We returned to the hotel around 5:00pm and relaxed a bit before dinner.

Earlier in the day we had made a reservation for tonight at the hotel restaurant and at 6:00pm we headed downstairs for dinner. We had a lovely meal washed down with Ruinart champagne (Keith’s favourite!), compliments of the hotel in celebration of Andrea’s birthday tomorrow.

After dinner we headed back upstairs, where we are now organising ourselves for an early-ish night.

Tomorrow we are planning on going to Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, which is about 80km south of Helsinki across the Gulf of Finland.