Finlandia - Day 1 (well, day 1/2 actually)

Last Friday, I left Salt Lake City for a week long work assignment in Helsinki, Finland. I’ve never been to Finland, so I've been quite excited. I flew from SLC to Paris, and then Paris to Helsinki. Evidently the 2+ hour layover in Paris wasn’t long enough, because on arrival at baggage claim at the Helsinki airport I heard over the intercom: “Will passenger Blomquist please come to Arrival Assistance?” or something similar. Uh, oh. Not a good sign. HOWEVER, I must point out that they did pronounce my last name correctly. WooHoo! Anyway, my luggage didn’t make the connection. Even though I had come prepared with extra undies, a toothbrush, toothpaste and deodorant in my carry-on, by bag arrived at 9:45 p.m. - the only problem was staying up that late to get my bag.

Helsinki is really quite quaint. My taxi driver made a point of telling my how safe Helsinki is – “you can walk around in the dead of night without fear of violence.”

My hotel room is really cool. MUCH larger than my hotel room in London. It also has a nice flat-screen TV hanging on the wall.



You have to put your room key in this slot in order for the lights to turn on. I guess that stops you from wasting energy by keeping the lights on when you’re not in your room.


When I asked the hotel hostess for some restaurant suggestions, the first two she suggested were a Thai place and an Indian place (the hotel restaurant is an Italian restaurant, and is supposed to be really good). So, I hit the Thai place. Really YUMMY!!

I walked down the street from my hotel to a little grocery store for some bottled water and saw these cool buildings. The pink building (according to my taxi driver) is the old Helsinki Opera House.



More to come...