Fukuoka to Helsinki to London

Posted on 2017/06/12 11:01:04 (June 2017).

[Sunday 11th June 2017]
Flew back to London today. Chie had booked with FinnAir which meant a change at Helsinki, and also a rather amusing pair of airport codes (I shall leave it to your imagination given Fukuoka and Helsinki).

We checked out of the Grand Hyatt in Fukuoka around 7:30 and got a taxi from there to the airport. It's a very convenient airport to get to, less than 20 minutes drive from the city centre. The queues were all rather long and annoying (I think I've become too acclimatised to business class recently) but once we were through security we had a nice surprise at the gate - several of the cabin crew put on a little sow just before boarding, singing a capella "I'm leaving on a jetplane" and then the theme tune from Totoro, after which another member of the crew played accordion while we were boarding.

On board, the crew seemed to be rather taken with Erika, and gave her a crew hat and scarf to wear, and had her help out with handing out the food and drinks. She seemed to rather enjoy that. They were a lovely bunch, all smiles and singing, I've never encountered such a nice cabin crew on a flight before.

Erika didn't sleep on the flight, and despite bizarrely often saying how she likes plane food didn't each much either. I just about managed to get her to sit through one film (Trolls, which seemed fittingly Scandanavian) so Chie and I could also have a bit of quiet time. I watched Prometheus (which I was rather underwhelmed by) and Great Wall (which was as bad as I expected).

We had a short change at Helsinki, and were in the airport there for a little under 2 hours. I was actually hoping our flight might have been delayed and we could have had an overnight stay in Helsinki, it would have been nice to get out and see some of the city. Another time. Was very pleased to find some gelatin free Finnish gummy sweets and also some salted liquorice which apparently is usually quite unpopular to a non-Finnish palate but I was rather taken by.

The connecting flight from Helsinki to London wasn't nearly as nice, it felt a lot more cramped than the long haul flight (which had been half empty), and there were no movies or anything to help pass the time... but Erika fell asleep for pretty much the entire duration, which was good.

Landed at Heathrow around 5pm UK time, got the Heathrow Express back to Paddington and then a taxi from there back home, getting us home for about 7pm. I made pasta for dinner, and we all ended up going to sleep about the same time after that._

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