The modern airplane creates a new geographical dimension.

The modern airplane creates a new geographical dimension. A navigable ocean of air blankets the whole surface of the globe. There are no distant places any longer: the world is small and the world is one. ~Wendell Willkie

 

Day 16 January 8

 

Kind of lost track of what day I'm up right now but i think this is my entry for the day January 8, although I'm writing it on January 9-Finnish time anyway!

 

So I spent the last 2 days flying and in transit. Having never flown further than Perth before I was a little unsure how this was all going to go

o I left Melbourne at 11.30am on Tuesday January 8 and arrived in Finland at 1pm on Wednesday January 9. I was in transit in China for five hours and in Amsterdam for four hours. In total it was 35 hours after I departed Melbourne when I arrived in Finland.

Thankfully someone warned me that some airports are bigger than what I might be used to. having flown from Melbourne for 10 hours, getting off the plane in China onto a packed bus which h everyone standing up holding on for their lives as the bus careened around corners in the dark would have freaked me out even more than it did had noone mentioned the possibility of buses to me.

Was starving because the meal on the plane had had peas right through it which I am not too find of!!

The only thing I could recognise in the Chinese shops at the airport were M & Ms. I bought a container but then couldn't figure out how to open them. Finally desperation won and I got it open.

My mind was blown by the size off the airport in China. The plane had to park so far away from the terminal because of all the different landing strips.

Another 13 hours on a plane and I was in Amsterdam.

Amsterdam airport was amazing.

It was like a mini city, there were lots of shops and other services. awe were loaded off into one section but when I figured out where I gad to go to depart the departures board said it was 33 minutes walk to the gate! Wow,! I didn't know that airport gates could be that far apart.

( A not very good photo out the window of my boarding gate at Amsterdam. Over the other side of the photo is another whole strip of boarding lounges. You can't really see them very well though.)

Four hours later I was on the last flight- just a small 2.5 hours to Finland.

Finland airport was small by comparison although there were still two arrival lounges? I figured out where Jono would be landing and went to that hall to wait for him.

Lots of planes came in at the same time, and heaps of people came through, but Jono didn't appear for ages. Turned out he left his phone in his rental car in Scotland and then the airlines lost his bag. He was sending me Facebook messages from his iPad but I wasn't getting them because my phone and iPad were completely flat. So after he'd waited in a long queue to report his bag missing he finally came through to the arrivals lounge.

Off we went to get the car that we had booked. Don't think the lady behind the counter understood English very well. Jono said to her it's left hand drive here isn't it and she said yes, very different for you, and he said no that's the same for us. Jono tried to ask a couple of questions about road rules but don't think she was really understanding so he just said it's ok, well figure it out!

Once we got to the apparently too "girlie" car and seeing it was left hand drive, we thought this was going to be interesting.

Of course at 4.30pm it was really dark and so the GPS was extremely useful. We got out onto the motorway and realised it was indeed not left hand driving, it was right hand driving.

Jono said he was very thankful I wasn't driving! So was I. It seems weird just being a passenger in a car driving on the other side of the road. Don't think I'd handle driving at all!

So after that excitement and taking a couple of turns too early or late and having to be re calculated and redirected we made it to the hotel.

Didn't venture any further as the 30 hours of travelling were starting to catch up with me by then! An early night was definitely in order as we had arranged to visit a school the next morning and had to be there at 9am.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

getting car, getting there

 

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