Finland Day 14 – On to Iceland

Wednesday morning we packed up from our two week stay in Finland and headed off to Iceland. We scheduled a one night stopover to take in some of the island nation.

Recently Finland completed an extension of the rail lines to the airport, so we took a very convenient train from Helsinki to Vantaa where the airport is located. A one hour flight to Stockholm left us with a short layover.

I mentioned a couple of days ago that we won the bid for an upgrade on our flight to Iceland. This actually turned out better than advertised as we got even better seats. We were just behind the first class curtain, but we received first class type seats, two to a row! We used the lounge pass for the terminal and then enjoyed meals, drinks, and plenty of room onboard. We were also supposed to have their flagship airplane Hekla Aurora take us to Iceland, however they changed the schedule on Tuesday and it was not available.

Once we arrived in Iceland we were off to our hotel and then right onto another bus for a tour. The goal was to see the northern lights, but the weather would not cooperate on this night. It was cloudy and extremely windy, our bus was slowed down having to fight the wind on the drive. We did enjoy thermal baths and a buffet dinner, but the hike to see the lights was cut due to weather. The guide and driver tried to find some chances to catch the lights on the drive back, but to no avail. We took a different route back to avoid some of the higher elevations where the wind was strongest.