Waheyyyy! Bonus post! Because what was supposed to have been an easy 6-7ish hour travel home day has entered its 17th hour, and is now unlikely to end til well past the 20th. At least I’m now finally back on home soil, albeit in London.
But before I go on, I just want to say that one of the few shitty things about travelling alone AND living alone is that when you do experience one of these longest-ever-days of brain killing delays, there is no one at the other end you can call and A: ask if there is any food at all in the house (there’s not), and B: beg to go get you the one thing you really wanna eat when you collapse just inside your doorway.
Wauuuggghhhh.
It has been a Long. Day.
I got up before 5am, got to the airport in Helsinki and went through security only to find my first flight to Oslo had just then been cancelled. So I went back out into the check-in area and joined an unmoving queue, which took an hour to move AT ALL and two more hours for me to get to a ticket agent. And I was in the front 10% of that queue, so god knows what the people at the end were thinking. It was HORRENDOUSLY managed. I will leave it at that though, because I have no energy left for an explanation.
Anyway, I was rebooked through London on a flight leaving at 4.30pm. Mind you, it was then about 9.30am. So, I got well-acquainted with Helsinki airport today. I ate lunch courtesy of my original airline (not bad) and drank a lot of overpriced coffee. I answered emails from my phone. I read a lot on my kindle. I stayed awake. Like a champ. I was actually rebooked on Finnair which hopefully means I’ll now get miles for my flights home as that’s part of my usual alliance, so, silver linings.
Now I’m in London, slightly delayed again, but with not quite enough time to eat proper dinner before I got on the flight. And I was so freakin’ tired I went out through immigration control instead of going straight through flight connections. WELL DONE ME. There was a friendly UKBA dude who helped me out and laughed along with me at my stupidity though, so that was cool. UKBA people aren’t usually so jolly.
I’m really hoping Virgin Little Red serve complimentary booze, because I need a drink now. And a pizza. Which I will likely order from the tram ride home. If I manage to get a tram. If I manage to ever get home. I can’t wait to see Edinburgh now.
A full barrage of Finland posts soon to come.