I stirred several times during the night. Each time, Suzy seemed to be sound asleep in the next cubicle. My watch was still showing Singapore time and I tried to work out what time it was in Helsinki. The Finnair steward had turned off the monitor for me before I went to bed.
At about 3am (Helsinki time), they turned the cabin lights on as a prompt for people to wake up. I'd managed to get more than eight hours of (broken) sleep.
During the night, I often had to battle with the blanket. Also, the sleeping seat belt over my hips was annoying. Suzy said she was only able to curl up in one direction because the strange narrow area where your feet go.
At about 4am (Helsinki time), they served us breakfast. It was another delicious meal. We landed just before 6am (11am Singapore time).
Overall I was very impressed with Finnair. The service and food in business class were excellent. They are almost as good as Qatar - which is high praise.
At Helsinki airport, the queue at customs was slow. They seemed to be giving preference to people who were catching a flight to another European city in the next 45 minutes.
That was puzzling to us because we thought they could have passed through EU customs at that city. When we asked the attendant at the end of the queue, he said the rule is that they have to do customs at the first city they land in.
By this time it was 7am. The taxi rank was confusing because there were cars lined up in four lanes side by side. Drivers in two lanes were from Helsinki Taxis and the others were private operators (like Uber I guess).
One of the private drivers quoted us 50 Euros but we declined and went for an official taxi which ended up costing us about 36 Euros.
The taxi dropped us at the entrance to the Hotel Haven at about 7:30am. The entrance was somewhat confronting because there were two flights of stairs to get to reception. There was no way I could have got my bag up there.
We'd organised for early check-in at 7am (rather than the standard afternoon check-in). Because Suzy had joined their loyalty club, they'd upgraded us to a better room. The room was on level 7, was quite spacious and had a glimpse of the harbour area and the sailing ships moored there.
The room has a king size bed, carpet, wardrobe, work desk, safe, plenty of power points, two comfy chairs and a side table. The bathroom is bigger than average with a shower in the bath. Wifi speed was about 40Mb/s in both directions.
After settling in, we set out at about 9:30am to explore the hotel and the surrounding area. We spoke to the hotel receptionist to get suggestions on what to do and where to go while we are in Helsinki.
One of the reasons that Suzy chose this hotel was that is close to the harbour. It's a nice setting with large sailing ships moored at the wharf. Larger cruise ships were moored further away in the harbour.
We left the hotel via the lower entrance near the harbour and went first to the Old Market Hall which is a long brick building on the wharf area.
For example, there was reindeer food, moose food, bear food, elk food . . . Our receptionist had told us about reindeer soup and salmon soup.
After leaving the Old Market Hall, we strolled along the wharf area to see more sights we'd never could have imagined. Several boats had moored next to the wharf and were selling seafood products from the back of the boat.
Further along, there were stalls selling more amazing goods. For example, have you ever tried moose meatballs? Suzy used her Google Translate app to work out what they were selling.
Finally there were stalls selling a wide variety of fruit. There were a few stalls selling mundane things such as clothing.
This area is known as Market Square and the waterway is known as South Harbour.
The receptionist told us that we came at the right time because they are celebrating the herring festival.
The ground was wet but it was no longer raining. It was cool (12C) and there was a light breeze. I wondered whether I should have worn by gloves and beanie. They are forecasting more rain tonight and tomorrow.
When we'd asked the receptionist for a good place to go for lunch, she had recommended a cafe nearby called Kappeli.
After lunch, Suzy went shopping to Stockmann, a fancy upmarket department store. I took a few photos of a nearby park and went back to the hotel.
For dinner, we'd booked at a restaurant, Sue Ellen, which is right next door to the hotel on the harbour side of the building. It specialises in seafood and gets good ratings online.
They were booked out for normal times so I booked for 5:30pm which wasn't a problem because we'd prefer an early night tonight after the flight from Singapore last night. Also we didn't want to have to walk too far - partly because I'm not very mobile nowadays and partly because they were forecasting rain tonight starting at 6pm.
When we arrived, there was only one other couple there. Later a group of people arrived and went to a private room at the back.
On their website, they didn't list wine prices and it was easy to see why when they gave me the wine list. The cheapest bottle was 76 Euros. So we only had one glass each. The one I chose was from the Rhone area of France where we'll be in a few weeks.
I ordered the halibut fish and Suzy just ordered an entrée. It was a very nice meal. It seems to be a worldwide trend that the more expensive a restaurant is the smaller are their servings.
I'm always tempted by chocolate and so I had the chocolate mouse dessert. We'd planned to have coffee but when we saw that they had Irish coffee, that was our choice.
When we left the hotel, it had indeed been raining. We were back in the hotel room by 7pm. Suzy found a murder mystery on Netflix that is based in Iceland and decided it was just what she needed to watch prior to our flight to Iceland on Thursday.
We were in bed at about 8pm (after we'd worked out how to turn the correct switches on or off).
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