Today was the day! Time to leave the baltic countries and head into Scandinavia.
Yesterday (on our red city bus tour) it was mentioned that the long road from Pirita (our Stellplatz neighbourhood) to the City Centre was one of the prime sites of morning rush hour traffic / congestion and so we decided to get up early. Real early. As in "I haven't got up this early in MONTHS early". And so the alarm clock was set for 6am :-)
We did beat the morning traffic, in fact we were SO early that we could have made it onto the ferry before our one. See the pic below, it's not even light yet!
But we enjoyed a home made coffee, their free internet and stood first in the queue.
We might have been the first to check-in (9am when the gates opened) but then we literally waited for close to 90 minutes before we were finally loaded.... Sitting in the car for 1.5 hours watching cars, trucks, bikes etc all allowed on.... Not my idea of fun.
BUT that meant we were one of the first to be off on the other side. So, off we got in Helsinki straight to our Campsite.
Two things we have noticed straight away: 1. Fuel prices have jumped. Having paid 90 cents / litre in Latvia and Estonia, it is now €1.40 in Finland. Ouch. Two: the camping prices follow suit, having paid around € 15 in the baltic states, try €35 for tonight! But in Rustila's defense, it was a lovely organised campsite and we got to do our laundry...
Just before dinner we took a quick cycle down to a huge shopping centre down the road to see if we couldn't find a finnish SIM card. Well, let me tell you, that was the quickest, most effortless process we have seen so far. Buy SIM Card, put into router, switch on, voila you have internet. No ID required, no prepaid contracts to sign, no activation period, no allocation of funds to data etc etc. Even Timm was impressed ;-)
And then, the second reason why I was impressed that day:
On our way out we took a stroll through a Sportsmans Warehouse-type shop and what do I see? Riding Gear! They sell riding gear in an average sports shop!! How cool is that!!! Timm was also happy but I think that had more to do with all the shooting / hunting stuff that they had on sale ;-)
So after a long day we headed into bed, ready to explore Helsinki tomorrow.
Just before dinner we took a quick cycle down to a huge shopping centre down the road to see if we couldn't find a finnish SIM card. Well, let me tell you, that was the quickest, most effortless process we have seen so far. Buy SIM Card, put into router, switch on, voila you have internet. No ID required, no prepaid contracts to sign, no activation period, no allocation of funds to data etc etc. Even Timm was impressed ;-)
And then, the second reason why I was impressed that day:
On our way out we took a stroll through a Sportsmans Warehouse-type shop and what do I see? Riding Gear! They sell riding gear in an average sports shop!! How cool is that!!! Timm was also happy but I think that had more to do with all the shooting / hunting stuff that they had on sale ;-)
So after a long day we headed into bed, ready to explore Helsinki tomorrow.
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