ANTICIPATION: FINLAND
It is a gloomy, blustery, rainy day when I am writing this. The last of the brilliant autumn leaves have turned brown and I don‘t feel like going outside. I should feel closed in and depressed. But yesterday Susie and Todd were thinking about what we would do on our ten day stopover in Finland when Todd came up with the wild idea of renting a car and driving from Helsinki through Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and northern Germany to Amsterdam. The small rental car would only cost about $300 for ten days. So we began to dream of places we had never thought of visiting, looking at them on Google: Tallin, Estonia and Riga, Latvia and Vinius, Lithuania, and Warsaw, Poland and a night in Berlin. In our high excitement we checked to make sure the rental car would only cost about $300, and it would, and then we noticed in smaller print, below, a $1600 fee to drop it off in a new location and $300 in taxes.
For a moment we were crushed, but only for a moment. Instead, we realized we can rent a car for three days in Helsinki and return it there, then take a two hour ferry ride to Tallin where we would rent another car, circle through Estonia and Latvia and part of Lithuania and return the car in Tallin, no drop off fees anywhere, and cross to Helsink and fly on to Paris as we had first planned. And this is really possible.
So last night, full of excitement, I booked our Paris to Delhi and return tickets on Finnair, in my euphoria not minding at all that the price had gone up $100 overnight. And then while Susie and Todd figured out our Baltic adventures I began to anticipate our trip.
So that is why on this very rainy and miserable day I feel so good. Part of the fun of travel is anticipation and today I am anticipating Helsinki, looking over my photographs of our previous three days there which I will show you now so you can share our excitement.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 