We hung around in our apartment in Sydney until 11am, then departed for the train, leaving my brother-in-law to enjoy having the place to himself for 23 days.
I was wearing my Uggboots, fearful of the cold in Helsinki, but this made dragging the suitcases to the station somewhat hellish – and the 20°C weather wasn’t doing me any favours. So we decided on a taxi instead.
After visiting the taxi rank at the station, we were taken to the Qantas terminal at Sydney Kingsford Smith Airport. Our driver helpfully gave us the departure cards we had to fill out for immigration.
We arrived so damn early, but we were unable to choose our seats as apparently everyone else had checked in online. Oh well, we were in the middle of the A330 aircraft and would not need to clamber over anyone. Much to my amusement, our second set of tickets had us flying from SIN to HEL.
We had Thai food before braving security. I was nervous, but glad that The Husband convinced me to eat beforehand – we had hours to kill. And kill them we did. I initially felt bad about wearing the Uggboots there, though it became clear that no one cared because 40% of the Australians I saw were wearing thongs. Okay, most of them were lining up for Bali, but don’t their feet get cold!?
We boarded our flight to Singapore at about 3:05pm and discovered some decent films on the entertainment system to watch. I kept myself awake and did badly at Sudoku, somehow killing 8 hours in the process.
We touched down in Singapore just as our next flight started boarding passengers. We got the gate number and ran, gasping, from one wing of Singapore Changi Airport to the other. Uggboots and a heavy laptop did not make it easy! And the security at the gate made me take off my Uggboots for screening (I’d had to do the same in Sydney) and we managed to board our Finnair flight without drama, despite the 10 minutes we’d had from deplaning to get to the gate.
I had quite a bizarre experience as I entered the plane. For the first time in my life, I was surrounded by people who looked exactly like me. I’ve never even experienced this back in Sydney. It completely threw me for a loop! I'd always suspected I had Scandinavian genes. This pretty much confirmed it.
We were stuck in the window/middle/aisle configuration, but towards the window which is not ideal for people with small bladders. We tried to get the Finn in the aisle to swap with us. He said he preferred where he was. I’m very sure he came to regret that stance, because The Husband and I were up and down a lot (we tried to sync up, to avoid bothering our seatmate) and then…I had been doing so well at jumping over him…but oh, I failed this one attempt in such a bad way. I slipped, I slammed my butt into his face and hit the chair across the aisle. Oh my God.
“Sorry!” I shouted and ran to the toilet without a backwards glance.
I slept for a good chunk of the 12-hour flight. I think I was conscious for less than half of it! As for the other few hours, Finnair has five times the entertainment content as Qantas, the toilets stay cleaner and we were 15 minutes early to Helsinki. Qantas has always been chronically late for me.
PS: Watched Your Name on that flight. Quite a good movie.
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