Iceland, Finland & Estonia: Post Scripts & More Helsinki

A postscript for Iceland:

We had decided that our drive back from Akureyri to Reykjavik would have us follow the shoreline of Whale Fjord (Hvalfjörður). Bob suggested we not loop back to the circular highway 1 but rather make our way back to Reykjavik via routes 48 and 36.

This seemed like a great idea and was until one of those routes transitioned from asphalt to packed gravel/dirt and then, fortunately for not too long a distance, into about 8 inches of loose smooth stones.

It was a real trial keeping the car in a straight line and not ripping out the undercarriage - but we made it.

I haven't driven a car in more than 10 years and, though very familiar with a standard, found it a bit daunting.

We returned the car to AVIS/Budget and got a courtesy shuttle ride back into downtown where we whiled away some time before beginning our airport trek.

Now, on to doings in Helsinki;

Yesterday while Bob was exploring I made my way to the Museum of Technology in the Arabia district, found the tram which would bring us to the ferry terminal and booked our passage to & from Tallinn. Bob had booked our train the Turku for the amazing price of 10 Euros each for an almost 2 hour ride so now we're set for the next phases of our journey.

Today we took out City Bikes whose stations are ubiquitous around the city. For 5 Euros you can rent the bike with no extra charge provided you park it back in a station each 30 minutes. After our first 30 minutes we parked and took a ferry to the Suomenlinna Fortress. Back on the mainland our 30 minutes were almost up when we spied a docking station and attempted to dock. Mine behaved but Bob's needed to be locked to another bike with a cable and it wouldn't behave. In our attempts to sort this out we got the cable locked to the bicycle but not to one in the stands.

Then the S.. hit the fan. Our code wouldn't unlock it and here we were standing with an unusable bike whose fork was locked and was overtime. I tried a few calls to the long distance number on the information panel and was completely frustrated. A passerby told us that the message said our time was up even though I had arranged a 24 hour stint. We took independent approaches with Bob's being the most expedient; I found a free WIFI and went online to rebook a bike and he got another cyclist with a code to unlock our bike and quickly dock it so no time was charged. Ugly problem solved.

We continued on foot, explored a cemetery, walked the shoreline of a lake and had a lunch in a lovely little cafe on the water.

Embarrassed Guy near the Ferry Terminal