Iberian Spring: Day 14 Barcelona Paris Helsinki

Soundtrack:

So begins the next adventure: getting home.

Right now, L and I should have been sitting in Qatar business class, somewhere over the Mediterranean, perusing the champagne and whisky menus, before lying back in our seats and having a nap 36,000 feet up in the air. Maybe I’d be blogging to you over the complimentary wi-fi, maybe I’d be thinking about blogging to you but I’ll have another drink and some canapes first.

What fun to pander what might have been.

Right now, L has just left Milan on her way to Singapore, after a brief tarmac stop. I’m sitting at Charles de Gaulle airport, struggling through a croque truffle that just might have been made when Mitterand was president, sipping pepsi because the coffee machine is broken. Smile, I’m travelling. The croque truffle is okay I guess, I can at least taste truffle, but the bread is a bit stale, and the crust is winning against the blunt knife-like tool they have provided (even if I got this onto a plane it’s not threatening anyone). I’m trying not to remember all the magnificent pan I had here less that 6 months ago: this bread would be great in onion soup, just not for a croque.

Had an early morning flight out of Barcelona, so of course I barely slept. We finished packing, tidied, and then went to catch a Bolt to the airport. Ha ha. If you read the right guides they tell you that Barcelona is special when it comes to ridesharing: unless you’re a regular, there’s a mandated 15 minute wait before you can book a bolt/uber/etc. (Spoiler alert, we’d glossed over reading that, and hadn’t booked any rides while we’d been here.) So while we’d left a bit of time for contingencies, an extra 15 minutes was cutting it a little close. Fortunately we were staying in tourist central, so there were vacant taxis everywhere, and we were soon on our way.

As airports go, BCN isn’t the best nor is it the worst, but it’s certainly not among my favourites. Like all airports these days, they haven’t hired enough security/scanning people, so it’s queue after queue. They don’t let you past the doors to check-in unless you can show proof of your flight, either a boarding pass (which, if you haven’t checked in you ain’t got) or if you’re a prepared Gen X like us, a print out of the booking. They need more signs pointing out which flights are checking in where. More signage in general would be good. I had a moment, this time I’m not checking a bag (that’s with L as her flights are easy and connect, while mine are a little haphazard), but the counter queues were slow and long. Fortunately the machine that is labelled for printing out luggage labels can also be used for checking in and printing boarding passes (not that there’s explicit signage for this).

So we got there. Some more queueing for security, and we had a few minutes to wander the duty free hall together before L needed to go through passport control. I’m not sure where I’ll have to go through passport control, as I still have another flight before I leave the Schengen. I don’t think it’ll be for this next flight, a jump to Helsinki, so maybe it’ll be there.

My flight from BCN to CDG was short and smooth, only about 90 minutes, we’d just finished climbing and it was time to descend. I finally got my tomato juice, along with some cheese and allegedly nutmeg biscuits (I could taste the cheese and paprika, but no nutmeg). My last act of kindness in Spain was helping a french couple find the right boarding gate, which was the same flight, and even pointed out they were zone 3 so needed to queue in a different line, so after all that they got to board before me. Sigh.

Terminal 2 at CDG is big, too big, it needs more travellators. I’ve done 3,000 steps getting off one plane and onto the next. I guess it’ll be good for my step count, but that distance almost needs a skytrain like at Changi. Or it needs more shops, as a lot of the walk was through plain boring terminal passages.

Smile, I’m travelling.

Next stop is Helsinki, and my first experience of Finnair. The plane is an Embrauer, so not even a full-sized plane. This will also be my first experience of Helsinki airport, as when we went to Finland on the Baltic trip in 2024 we came and left by boat. I’ve got over 5 hours there, so I’m guessing I’ll get to know most of it.

Barcelona, Paris, Helsinki, three cities that have hosted the Olympics. Three cities that have hosted me today. Flight into Helsinki was fine, fairly short, smooth, and uneventful. Dozed uncomfortably for most of it, I just put in my earbuds and off I went. Helsinki looks a little cold and wet, it’s kind of grey but I think they have about a million hours of twilight this time of year.

Travel tip: on a Thursday evening, most of the good food and things are on the domestic side of passport control. There were several places quite lively and open, offering some amazing looking korvapuusti cinnamon buns. The coolest thing the other side of passport control is a pizza vending machine. I mean, that’s pretty cool, butbeyond that is a deli that only has one person working, so so it might not always have someone at the counter, and Luigi’s Italian that at least seems to have 2 or 3 people, though it’s too late for pasta so I’ve just eaten one huge pizza — they don’t do small sizes here. Pizza was okay by non-Italian standards, some cheese, sauce, allegedly spicy sausage. The pint of IPA I had with it was very good, from Bryggeri. That’s right, I’m saying good things about an IPA. The Bryggeri is malty, with just a small amount of bitterness, and the hop dose is almost all aroma with a little bit of tropical fruit. The maltiness makes it work, if they’d upped the bitterness much more we’d be looking at the sort of IPA I don’t like.

Or maybe I’m just tired and my senses are all over the place. I’m not sure if it’s been a long day or a short day, as I’ve been travelling east to west, so moving further into timezones greater than UTC. According to google I’ve time-travelled an hour into the future from Barcelona time. I’m on my third language of the day, full of pizza carbs and beer, and in a land that does lots and lots of twilight. I’m just happy I can still remember Finnish for thank you.

Kiitos.

For travellers, Luigi’s has high benches with power points. I’m working through recharging all the things ahead of the next flight. It’s possible that the little Embrauer 190 had charging — as I was getting off the plane I noticed a USG slot in the little armrest, but Finnair otherwise don’t allow the use of powerbanks on board. They mentioned this twice in the safety message (well four times if you’re being pedantic, twice in English and I’m going to assume twice in Finnish).

Quick pause to get another excellent beer, might as well enjoy it while I can. I’ll at least have a coffee before the flight, and Helsinki airport has potable water stations. The current staff at Luigis are filipinos, it used to be that you’d find Aussies everywhere doing this kind of work, but nowadays, seems a good chance of seeing a fillipina or filipino serving your food or pouring your beer. Or, in Australia definitely, caring for the elderly, there are a lot in aged care. Filipinas aren’t just amazingly fierce drag queens. It might be time we all learnt how to say mabuhay!

Three hours until boarding. Helsinki airport is pretty quiet. There’s just one other customer in Luigis, a guy with two laptops, and I’m just thinking that must take forever to take them out to go through the scanners. I hope he’s not wearing a belt as well, cos getting stuck behind him in the queue would be hell.

Time to wander, get a korvapuusti, kill some time.

Next stop Singapore, where I’ve got a couple of days to sweat myself back into the right time zone.