Destination Helsinki

The Singapore trip celebrated our birthdays. This "Chase the Northern Lights" trip is one of our 90-day visa reset trips. It was booked long before we knew about CJ's hip replacement and Carol's knee replacement.

It has been all of five days since our return from Singapore and now we are off to Helsinki. 

In that short five days, a toothache has seen CJ visit the dentist, an infected finger has seen a jeweler saw off his wedding ring, a mysterious paralysis of his thumb joint rendering him unable to open bottles come and go, his new glasses delivered on the final day, and a podiatrist work diligently to recover two painful ingrown nails. In short, he's been a mess this week.

An uneventful Qatar flight to Doha with an excellent appetizer and a barramundi main is good therapy for our frazzled nerves.

We enjoy a nice short stay in the magnificent Doha lounge.

It's been a very long time (something like our first and third flights into Doha) since we've drawn a plane parked out on the ramp. The aircraft is an Airbus 330. Carol rejects walking up the stairs. It's been a long time since we entered an aircraft on the wrong side (long ago in Frankfurt).

A very nice Finnair codeshare flight to Helsinki delivers us to Finland even if the flight to Helsinki is an hour longer due to a circuitous route made essential by Middle East tensions. 

Instead of flying directly through Iran or Iraq and across Turkey (the direct route), this flight crossed due west across Saudi Arabia and Egypt before turning north and crossing eastern Europe to Finland.

The food and wine on this Finnair flight are surprisingly better than the Qatar flight. The plate included rosemary focaccia, four fruits including excellent dragon fruit, haloumi, smoked salmon, smoked turkey, cheese, a delicious egg, sausage, stuffed eggplant, and a delicious sauce. They poured very good Loire Valley sauvignon blanc, and a Macon-Village white burgundy.

We arrived in Helsinki an hour late. It is a new airport: CJ's 209th.