We slept in rather late this morning, and we could blame jet lag coming from Scotland or it might just be going to bed late last night. Sari and Ömer were long gone, they had started work hours ago. Jasmin was still at home though, school had finished a few days ago, and she made us breakfast.

Our original plan for our day in Helsinki before flying North to Kemi was to meet Maria's friends Anne and Ivan from Spain, but their kids were sick. As it was snowing quite heavily, we had no desire to just wander the city centre sights and shops, we have seen it all before.

We decided just to stay in the apartment until Sari returned after finishing work at 2pm. Maria and Jasmin went out to meet Sari at the shops, but David stayed home in the warm and tried to catch up on writing the blog. It's getting more and more behind, but we have the notes and photos so we'll get there.

We had a nice lunch of chicken, vegetables and salad. Somehow we didn't eat so healthily in Latin America, but it's good to be having the fresh produce again without fear of food poisoning.

After our late lunch, we said our goodbyes to Sari and Jasmin (we'll see them the day after tomorrow up North) and headed for the train station. We were off to meet Taina in the city centre. Taina and Tomi, our friends in New Zealand, had left in September, while we were away, to go back to Finland.

The train into Helsinki central was quick, only about 15 minutes, so we ended up being quite a bit early to meet Taina. With the snowy weather however, we were quite happy to make our way to Praha, a bar just opposite the station and have a beer while we waited.

As it turned out, Taina wasn't too far behind us. It was so good to see her again especially knowing that we wouldn't see her, or Tomi, when we get back to New Zealand. After 90 minutes of catch up and a few rounds of Karhu and Salmiakki (a Finnish beer and Finnish vodka based shot), which was all too quick, we had to leave to catch the bus to airport.

Being Christmas and snowy weather, we weren't leaving anything to chance, we needed to catch our flight. As it turned out there were no traffic delays and the tip from Sari to get off at Terminal 1 worked in our favour. We were the only people to get off the bus at the first terminal and because we checked in yesterday we could go straight through security. There was absolutely no queue at all, in fact the staff had to get up of their chairs to check our bags.

When we walked airside, through to Terminal 2, it was a different story. It was like walking across an invisible line, the place suddenly changed from a ghost town to a packed airport full of frantic Christmas travelers.

Once again we had plenty of time before our flight, but we were okay with that. We had agreed a year ago that any flights we took during our year away, we would always turn up in good time and never be in a position of pleading at a closed check in desk.

There is a bar at Helsinki airport that bizarrely David has never had a drink at before, that was rectified today though. We managed a couple of drinks before we made our way to the gate, but because of snow, perhaps, our flight was delayed.

The other flights seemed to be going out okay though and then we had another delay, our 8:45pm flight was now leaving at 10:30pm. Fortunately there were no further delays and we arrived in Kemi just before midnight. Despite the delay, Maria's mum was there to meet us and it wasn't too long before our bags were out and we were on our way to her apartment. Once there we were straight to bed, we have to be up early tomorrow for the drive to spend Christmas in true Lapland.