July 30 To Finland! (Day 307)
A very early morning! We had a bus to catch for the half hour ride to the Warsaw airport for our flight at 8:55am to Helsinki, Finland! We arrived the requisite one and a half hours before our flight and walked around the airport because we will be sitting for several hours, under 2 hours on the flight, then over 4 hours on a train.
A montage of the first half of day. Clockwise from upper right; The Staszic Palace, an imposing building housing The Polish Academy of Sciences, on our way to the bus stop at 6 in the morning! The newstand at the airport with important world news, so glad that Kamala gets equal space with Taylor Swift, and the opening ceremony of the Olympics! On the plane, our first ‘Long Drink’, the popular drink of Finland! The view of the Gulf of Riga, along the coast of Latvia. And finally, maybe the coast of Finland?
We landed in Helsinki, the airport being outside the city, we never actually saw Helsinki! We were able to take a subway the short distance to a suburban train station to catch our train that will take us north to the seaside town of Kokkola on the Gulf of Bothnia!
Clockwise from upper left; The countryside of Finland, farm fields carved out of the boreal forest. The train that continues north above the Arctic Circle, it was very comfortable. The gorgeous flowers growing in the small beautiful town of Kokkola.
Walking through town to our Airbnb, then to the grocery store and back, we found the small but serene Sunti River.