Finland does good trains!! The bed was one of the most comfortable that we had slept in all year, the private toilet worked like a dream and there was even a hot shower to boot. It was almost a shame that we had to get off. We had slept soundly the entire night and were woken by the alarm before having to get ready quickly. The train had made up time through the night and was arriving on schedule at 9am in Helsinki's main train station.

We did another shuttle run to get our luggage from the upstairs cabin on the train to the platform. It’s not that the bags were overly heavy; it’s just that the corridors on trains are so narrow. We headed for the luggage lockers to store the one bag that we would need overnight and then took the other 3 to the airport.

Our flight is not until tomorrow night but it was actually possible to check our luggage in today. We took the shuttle bus to the airport and met Sari, Maria’s aunt, who conveniently works for Finnair. With her help, we got the flight opened and the 3 bags checked in. Two of the bags were actually extra luggage, one a snowboard bag even, and cost €150, but to get them all the way to Auckland it seemed like a bargain to us. We were given our boarding cards and the luggage tag for our fourth bag, which was still in the train station locker, just to make tomorrow evening quicker and easier.

Back on the bus, we headed back to the city centre and to the Fazer Café. Fazer is a very famous chocolate company in Finland and their coffee isn’t bad either. Although there was a very nice chocolate served with the coffee, we had a 'Laskiaispulla’ as well. A laskiaispulla is a cardamon-spiced bun cut in half and filled with strawberry jam and lots of whipped cream…very tasty!!

We had arranged to meet our Kiwi friends, Tomi and Taina, for the afternoon. They had left New Zealand while we were away on our travels and returned to Helsinki for a bit. In true Kiwi/Finnish style, we went straight to a bar. Praha, a nice centrally located bar, was unanimously voted for and we walked the short distance across town. To find it closed. This worked in David’s favour though because just around the corner was a sports bar that David had seen many times while walking out of the train station but had never been in before. Sports Academy isn’t the flashest bar in the world but it was open. After a few beers for the boys and lonkeros for the girls, we decided to find somewhere to eat. We were taken to a Mexican cantina, Santa Fe, for a huge, house special, burrito.

The food was tasty and filled us up nicely, although not that full though that we couldn’t manage another few drinks. We tried our luck back at Praha and thankfully this time it was open. As with our last visit to Praha, just before Christmas, it wasn’t long before the Salmiakki (salty liquorice flavoured vodka) shots were ordered. Sensibly though after a few rounds of drinks, we called it a night or more accurately, an early evening.

We said our goodbyes to Tomi and Taina as they headed to the train station and then we started to look for a bed for the night. The Sokos Hotel Vaakuna was the closest and we figured that no hotel would be cheap in the capital so we might as well just bite the bullet and pay whatever they were asking.

It wasn’t the cheapest hotel we’d ever stayed in but it wasn’t the dearest either. We were given a nice room on the sixth floor with an incredibly comfy bed, a huge bathroom with one of those rainmaker type showers. And the best bit, at least for us being used to 10am checkouts, this was a midday checkout.

We headed back to the train station, which was only across the road, to get our suitcase from the locker and wheeled it back to the hotel. We then settled down for the rest of the evening on the comfy bed, watching television on the big screen.