Monday I was running a little bit late. I arrived at the Hotel GLO with my bag packed for Paris around 9:45am, left the bag in their room and headed straight to breakfast. It was a close call because the breakfast line shut down at 10am, but I just made the window!
After finishing packing and leaving our bags in the luggage room we headed out to Arabia. The plan for the day was to go to the Arabia Design museum (which opens at noon), then go to the photography museum on the other side of the city. After we looked through quite a few design outlet stores out in the Arabia building it was noon but we still couldn't get to the museum. When we asked the information desk about the museum we learned that it is closed on Mondays so a new plan was in order. Off to Otaneimi we went via three modes of public transportation - tram to metro, metro to bus, and bus to school. I showed off our studio space, parts of the wood shop, and then we went to lunch at the Aalto cafe. Salad that day did not include lettuce which was quite curious, but my beet and meat patties were not horrid.
Once we got back to the city centre we had a few hours to kill so went to Fazer for coffee (a chai latte for me) and chatted until it was time to start heading to the airport. The 615 bus arrived on schedule at the main train station and travel took no longer than a taxi at much less cost. Security in Helsinki ran flawlessly and before we knew it we were sitting at the gate eating cheese nips and playing scrabble on the ipad. I did slightly better...but still have a lot lot to learn. Approximately 30 minutes before the flight was supposed to board (which is an hour before take off) people started lining up to go through the doors. It was my first EasyJet flight and the cattle call approach was quite strange to me. We were a little concerned that we were out of the loop because the man making announcements sounded like he was speaking French even when he was speaking English but we got on and found three seats together quite easily. After sitting on the ground for an hour and a half due to some mechanical issue which was later deemed not a problem for flight, we took off and headed to France! We arrived around 12:00 Parisian time (1:00 Helsinki time), found a cab, and headed to our hotel.
Checking in the guy at the desk clearly spoke French, Italian, English, and I believe he also spoke Spanish. It was very impressive how quickly he could switch between one and the next. The room was very spacious which was exciting but newly painted which was evidenced by the tape and fumes. Thankfully we mitigated the smell by opening the window and turned up the heat to get a great first night of sleep in Paris before our first day of exploring the town.
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