Yesterday I mentioned that we found the breakfast buffet at the Grand Central Hotel in Helsinki to be a bit unusual.
I actually wondered if I had mistakenly taken the wrong door in the back of our wardrobe, and found ourselves in an alternative universe. So today, I was extra careful.
We are leaving for Paris today on a flight departing at 12.15pm, so we had plenty of time for a leisurely breakast. We got downstairs and found a table, which was a whole different experience to yesterday. Yesterday, we couldn’t find table anywhere.
We sat down, and MBW went off in search of food while I minded our stuff. She came back a few minutes later with a glass of green stuff, and a number of things on a plate that I recognised. I was feeling confident.
I went ino the serving area and did a quick scan of the buffet. I saw pickled cranberries, raisin soup, pickles … I kid you not.
Who eats pickled cranberries and raisin soup for breakfast?
I wondered if I had mistakenly found myself on the set of “Candid Camera”?
But there was other stuff there too. Regular stuff like bacon, scrambled eggs, and tomatoes.
And croissants. So all was forgiven 🙂
We had determined that we needed to leave the hotel and be on a train to the airport by 10.00am to allow ouselves plenty of time for the flight, but by shortly after 9.00am we had nothing else remaining for us to do … except eat pickled cranberries, and I’m pretty sure that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.
So we gave our room a final check over, locked our suitcases, saddled up and checked out of the hotel.
Our room was quite functional in a “restored 1900s building with modern facilities” kind of way.
The train station was downstairs, so we headed out, bought our tickets to the airport and got on the train
Helsinki airport is a pretty bustling little place. We dropped our bags and went through the space-age luggage scanners that don’t require you to take your large electronics out of your bag.
I took the opportunity to remove everything from my pockets, plus my belt … as I had no intention of becoming romantically involved with the security guards again.
Our flight was uneventful. I know that I always say that when I talk about flights, but “uneventful” is alway my preference to “catestrophic engine failure”, or “rapid depressurisation of the cabin resulting in oxygen masks falling from the ceiling”.
The plane was an Embraer 190 which means absolutely nothing to me, except that it had a 2-2 seating configuration.
We landed in Paris about 10 minutes ahead of schedule and because we were on a relatively small plane, it didn’t take long to disembark or get our luggage.
Our next challenge was to collect our vehicle from the people who are supplying us with a new car – Car-2-Europe. We are essentially buying the car tax-free for 39 days and then giving it back.
We were collected from the airport and taken to the car yard where we signed bits of paper, and then watched a nice French gentleman do battle with the car’s menu system in an effort to change everything to English.
So, let me introduce you to Claude la Citroën Argentée. Claude for short.
Claude is a brand new CitroĂ«n C4 with 3 (that’s three) kilometres on the clock. He seems to be a hybrid, because the dashoard shows that there is a battery charging, so I’ll have to read the instructions to figure all of that out
So far I’ve managed to adjust the side mirrors and the seat, and I’m pretty pleased with myself.
French drivers are impatient maniacs. That’s the nicest thing I can say. I was desperately trying to stay within the speed limit on the trip from Paris to our Airbnb near Montlevon, and before we had gone 10km, I’d been overtaken with lots of horn honking because I wasn’t going fast enough.
And that’s despite the fact that I am driving a brand new car, on the wrong side of the car, on the wrong side of the road, and trying to interpret road signs in a different language, with speed signs that require the driver to have advanced mental telepathy.
if the speed signs exist at all.
And did I mention that many of the pretty little French backroads are barely wide enough for two cars to pass, yet I’m trying to stay on the road while a bus is barrelling towards me?
But it will get better. I know it will.
We are staying at a very pretty little cottage that seems to be in the middle of nowhere, and set in a lavender farm. A really gorgeous setting, although the cottage itself is probably best described as “quaint”. It is probably typical of houses built 100 years or more ago, and are very different to what you would expect in Australia.
We dropped off our bags and ducked out to a little supermarket about 10 minutes away to get some supplies for dinner. We also found a boulangerie, which will be the first place we go in the morning to get some baguettes and croissants.
After that we are on a mission to get some snow chains. Snow chains are a bit like life insurance – you need to carry them, but you hope never to need them.
That will be tomorrow’s adventure.
Ciao
#Europe2025