Archive for the ‘Travel’ Category

We used Manchester Airport fast track for the first time last week. We received a discount on it with our car parking, though it is only about £4 anyway. Is it worth it? I would say that it probably is.

It’s pot luck of course. You might end up going through on a day when the regular line has no queue. Or you might find that there are long queues in both regular and fast track. In fact, it reminded me of the speedy boarding passes in Come Fly With Me.

However, on the day we went through there was a queue at the regular line, which from what I remember seems fairly standard for Manchester, whereas we got straight through. Given the cost is fairly small in relation to the wider cost of the travel, it seems like it is worth the gamble to speed the process up and reduce my stress levels.

We had lounge access included in our outboard flights to Iceland. This was my first experience with an airport lounge, so I was keen to see what it was like.

We had access to the Aspire lounge at Manchester. It was easy to find but there was some confusion on arrival. Everyone else had lounge passes, but as we had electronic tickets, we had not received any. It wasn’t clear on their system that our ticket included lounge access, but this was eventually cleared up by a senior member of staff.

The area itself was reasonably comfortable, with a variety of seats and tables. There were power sockets embedded in our table, but no view of any flight boards. The view was reasonable.

Food and drink

The food and drink is included. We ate our way through a pastry, two bowls of soup, four bags of crisps and a slice of cake. They also brought out a few sandwiches as we were leaving.

Alcohol is included, so if you are a heavy drinker you can probably reclaim your £20-30 entry fee in that.

Downsides

The wifi was awful.

The lounge has no toilets of its own, but shares communal ones. These were tiny. One of the things I like about airports is that they usually have large and airy toilets, but these were not.

The lounge was not too busy, but then neither was the airport. Assuming it scales up proportionally, I think you would find that at busy times, escaping the bustle of the airport would only bring you into the bustle of the lounge. Online reviews seem to agree.

Conclusion

If it’s included in your ticket, then it is worth taking advantage of lounge access. If not, I’m not sure. I need a bigger dataset before I can really make a recommendation.

Back in September I wrote about our trip to Finland and Finland wedding. A lot of the photos I posted were my own though, which meant I missed some of the group shots and wedding photos that I was on the other side of the lens for.

My parents were good enough to send me their photos though, so we’ve now got some photos of the two of us.

In September we headed over to Blackpool for the Monster Raving Loony party conference. I had never been to Blackpool before so I was curious to see what it was like. The answer was slow-going. It took us four hours to get from Leeds to the hotel. it is nice to see a British seaside town thriving though.

The conference was held at Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Who ID’ed both Elina and I, twice. The barmaid asked for our ID, which by sheer luck Elina had on her, and spent ages mulling over whether she could accept a Finnish ID card. Then, just after that, the bouncer came round and checked our ID too.

However, he does win some points because when he found out Elina was from Finland he said he had been to Helsinki. Which is actually in Finland. So many people respond to the news by saying “I’ve been to Sweden”. We couldn’t give a shit if you have been to Sweden, stop saying it!

The party had organised an open top tour bus so we paraded round the town while Howling shouted into a megaphone from the front of the bus.

We got some touristy things in while we were there. We wandered around the piers, all of which had 5 star health ratings. I will be honest, I’m suspicious. We visited the biggest Wetherspoons I had ever seen, across three fours with a lift in the middle. We did the sea life centre and played the free round of pirate mini golf you get with it.

We went for a walk down the sea front, which wasn’t mega-interesting. However, where else can you randomly come across a line or daleks?

Every time we got to a Loony party conference, which is now a sample size of two, someone is advertising discount weddings.

What I found annoying about Blackpool is how backward it is though. I can accept that not everywhere has Uber, though it is annoying. However, no where took credit cards. I am not even talking about street vendors (though a lot of street vendors in Leeds do take credit cards now, and all of them do in Helsinki), but even the restaurant we had dinner in did not take credit cards! Really frustrating.

Those of you who have travelled with me will be pretty shocked that this bag is the only bag I took when going to Blackpool for an entire weekend. Literally, this was it. No little extras, no camera slung round my neck, everything went in this one bag.

Of course it is a medium-sized sports bag, which is quite a big bag, but for me this is super light. I am not sure it has really sold me on travelling with this little stuff though. It was easy to move around, but by the time you have put some clothes, toiletries and a laptop in it, it is pretty much full.

Here is the useful stuff I had to leave out to get it down to that…

Camera

I like to bring my camera, and a couple of lenses. I gave up and decided to make do with my iPhone. Normally I could have taken some really nice photos with my full set up. Instead, I was forced to actually enjoy the moment, which was very irritating.

Toiletries

Obviously I bring some, but I coast by using Elina’s tooth paste, shampoo and conditioner. No shaver or towel either.

Guitar / piano

Okay, it would have been a struggle to bring the piano. However, I am supposed to practice every day so it is a little annoying to be without any musical instruments all weekend.

Books

I would normally bring a book a book to read. Instead, I had to switch reading to something I had a Kindle edition of.

iPad charger

Luckily for a weekend I managed to get all I needed from one charge. No space for mistakes though.

Headphones

Normally I would take two pairs. My small in-ear ones for walking around and my big noise canceling ones for when I am at the hotel, on a plane, etc. I did not bring either and it turned out I did need them when I got up at 5:45am to watch the Japanese grand prix. Luckily Elina had some I could borrow.

You almost certainly don’t take all of these items with you when you travel. But do you take some of them? I feel like I have genuinely cut out useful stuff here. It’s not just because I am a horrible over-packer.

Last month we popped down to Burbage for the weekend to visit Hugh & Anna.

If Hugh was not a middle-aged man trapped in a young man’s body before, owning his own house has only increasing this vasty. They are like proper grown up people with furniture, and a garden, and a plan for where their lives are going.

Worse still, it is infectious. Hugh took me to the driving range at his local golf club and it was actually quite a lot of fun. I’m 28 years old, golf should not be fun!

They also have two new additions to the family, of the feline variety.

It is difficult to take a good picture of a creature that insists on licking your camera lens.

We dropped by Helsinki Zoo while in Finland. They had elk! We also managed to catch the bear feeding.

For the first half of our wedding we travelled to Finland. I do me “we”! All together we took a contingent of 17 people there. Elina and I flew out in advance to spend some time in Helsinki.

We stopped by Stadi Talkers Toastmasters club and then checked into Hotel Haven. Haven is my favourite hotel in the world. However, Helsinki is the only place we stay in a luxury hotel, so there isn’t really any competition. But it is really nice. I couldn’t blag us a suite for the wedding, but they did give us a celebratory box of chocolates!

Moomintroll looked very pleased to be back.

We then headed off to have dinner. The first time we were in Helsinki we had seen Ravintola Nokka but decided it was too expensive. This time, we were here for our wedding though, so decided to splash out. It was awesome. The best food I have had in Finland.

Below is a panorama from our dockside meal.

On Tuesday we visited Helsinki Zoo who had elk this time, and in the evening meet up with my family for a steak at Goodwin. We spent the day with them on Wednesday when we visited the island of Suomenlinna.

On Thursday we set off on our own again to visit Moominworld, before having lunch on a riverboat in Turku and meeting Elina’s mum for dinner in the evening. We even had time to stop by the yarn shop.

Then on Friday, we headed up to Pori to spend a day on the sandy beach up there, before having a late lunch in the town.

James took this photo of the beach.

Saturday was the big day itself. I will write that up separately.

We spent Sunday touring the lakes around Laitila, going for a dip in two of them and making use of the beach sauna too. Trouble was ahead when Norman managed to lose his glasses in the lake, but Dr Barr came to the rescue by managing to dive down and find them – and they laughed when I said I would go fetch the PhDs…

Helsinki was good, but relaxing over in the west was one of the best parts of the trip. We’re already eyeing up summer cottages for when Worfolk Limited makes its IPO.

Having finally arrived in Helsinki after an exhaustive day of travelling there was really only one thing to do – find a local Toastmasters meeting. Actually, I had already found the club online. There are half a dozen in Finland but only one was meeting while we were there. Stadi Talkers is a President’s Distinguished Club, the highest honour a club can earn.

Meetings are conducted in English. Although some clubs speak in their own language, Toastmasters is generally like the British Empire – they go into other people’s country and insist their speak English. You have to learn Swedish as a second language in Finland. That means that the people at the meeting who were speaking more eloquently than I was were mostly doing it in their 3rd language.

People were friendly and welcoming. It was a mixture of Finns and immigrants, and the standard of English was high. A lot of cool people there too. I got chatting to a guy who used to work at Rovio, the maker of Angry Birds. They have something like 900 people working their now, which I assumed meant they were branching out into more games. However, it turned out that was 900 people all working on Angry Birds!

The meeting format only had minor differences to ours. They had Table Topics in the first half and a seperate person from the Grammarian introduced the word of the day. Every time someone slipped it in they pounded on the table. They even had an educational on Easy Speak – it would have brought a tear to Euan’s eye. Guests were only introduced at the end of the meeting, after they had had time to settle down and get comfortable.

I spoke twice. I did the toast of the meeting, which we do not have in Leeds but makes perfect sense when you are in a pub. I also did a Table Topic and came away with the ribbon. Not a bad start to the trip!

Suomenlinna is a fortress island in the bay of Helsinki. It was originally built by the Swedes to stop the Russians from invading. Ultimately it did not work, but it is now a UNESCO world heritage site (one of two we visited on the trip, the other being Old Rauma).

The island has a selection of bars and cafes, six museums and a few shops. It claims to have a memorial to prisoners of war as well but it clearly is not where it is supposed to be according to the map. The island also has several hundred permanent residences ensuring a good ferry service. During the day it runs every 20 minutes and the day runs from 5am to 2am the next morning.

You have to walk on Suomenlinna, there is basically no disabled access due to the cobbled streets, hills and dirt tracks. However, the mile to the other side of the island feels a lot shorter because there is so much to see and do.

Some panoramas too. Click for a larger version: