The alarm was set early today, we needed to be up, showered, eaten breakfast and out the door by 10am. We were booked on the SAS flight at 1pm to Stockholm with an onward connection to Helsinki. The drive from Melrose, in the Scottish Borders, to Edinburgh airport would take an hour at best and longer if there was traffic delays.

We were ready to leave about 9:45am so we thought just to leave anyway. Better to be a bit early at the airport than late. David's parents took us to the airport and we made good time, getting dropped off at about 10:50am. The airport was quite busy and even though our check-in hadn't opened, there was a queue of maybe 30 people. By the time check-in opened at 11am, the queue had snaked around a number of times and was virtually out the door.

We checked in fine and our luggage was going straight through to Helsinki. David made it through the security check with a manual search, but he did make sure to pack the Alfajores in his hold luggage this time instead of hand luggage.

We had plenty of time to wander round the shops without buying anything, as usual, before settling down in the bar for a couple of drinks to wait for our flight to be called.

It was a full flight but pretty uneventful, there was no meals or snacks, just a bit of time for reading. We had a couple of hours to kill in Stockholm and this time we were trying to buy stuff in the shops, but everything seemed to be on sale for flights outside the EU. Wandering up towards our gate, we saw the hamburger chain Max, promising to be the best burger in Sweden. And to be honest, it was actually a very good burger. If we're ever back in Sweden we'll be heading for the closest Max.

The flight was a bit delayed in leaving, but within the hour we had landed in a snowy Helsinki. It took forever for our bags to come off, we were the last ones left at the belt and for a little while we thought our bags might not have made it. Eventually, with our bags on a trolley, we wheeled them out to be met by Maria's aunt, Sari, who would be putting us up for the night.

Sari works for Finnair at Helsinki airport and she told that we could already check in for our domestic flight tomorrow evening and even check in our hold bags so we didn't have to lug them around. Apparently this was to ease congestion in the airport in the run up to Christmas. We all made our way through to Terminal 2 and the FlyBe check in. It was dead, there wasn't a person in the queue so we went straight to the Special Assistance desk. The flight wasn't actually open on the computer system yet, but after a few words from Sari, the guy opened the flight, our bags were tagged and we were given our boarding cards.

It took us about 20 minutes to get from the airport to Sari's apartment in Vantaa. Ömer, Sari's husband, and Jasmin, their daughter and Maria's cousin, were waiting for us at home. No sooner had we put our bags, the hospitality began in earnest. Drinks were poured while the final touches were made for dinner. Ömer is Turkish and prepared an excellent array of traditional Turkish dishes, made with vegetables imported from Turkey for true authenticity. Delicious doesn't even start to describe it.

After dinner drinks continued to be poured - wine, glögi (a warm Christmas drink in Scandinavia similar to mulled wine) and Czech beer. Ömer and Sari had recently been for a city break to Prague and were quite taken with the beer there. David had to agree that the dark Kozel beer was very good.

We were quite late in arriving and it was great catching up over drinks, but we were very conscious that both Sari and Ömer were working in the morning, and early at that. Sari had to be at the airport for 5am and Ömer wouldn't be too far behind so we called it a night to allow them at least a little bit of sleep.