Polar night and polar bear island - a Norwegian winter adventure

[Justinf]

The windows had condensation and taking pics was tough.
Flight time from wheels up to wheels down was one hour and 13 minutes.

 

[Justinf]

I decided to go through passport control pretty much straight away and after a fair old walk, limping fairly badly by now, I eventually got there. There was no line and I was through.
My next quest was to search for the Finnair lounge and it was right next to gate 52, which also happened to be the gate my flight to Doha was leaving from.
I’m not a huge fan of lounges. I find them uninteresting and sterile although I do appreciate not having to spend any money.
This one was quite big with a bartender in the middle doing coughtails,

 

[Justinf]

I managed to doze off sitting pretty much upright so after a while I decided to take a walk, or a limp, around the airport for a bit just to wake up.
Back to the lounge after a stroll and grabbed a glass of French red.
I wish I could remember what it was, but I had another and then it was time to board.

 

[Justinf]

Boarding completed and I was in seat 3L.

 

[Justinf]

Feeling all warm and fuzzy inside after the two glasses of red, I couldn’t bypass the sparkling for PDB, but I really like the Finnair blueberry juice so the FA gave me both.

 

[Justinf]

The views on takeoff at Helsinki were stunning with the sun setting.

 

[Justinf]

Drink and nuts after takeoff.
I had the Italian Piedmont barbera.

 

[Justinf]

No spoilers about the Super Bowl please.
I plan to watch it if I can find a replay on the Qatar flight.

 

[Justinf]

For dinner I chose the lamb, but there wasn’t much lamb. In fact I could have sworn one of the pieces was salmon.
It was still quite good.


I really like the Finnair product, especially the hard product on the A330. I can actually lay flat in my preferred sleeping position which I can’t do on, for example, Singapore or JAL.
The soft product, while decent, isn’t as good.
The typical Finnish hospitality is there. Friendly and perfectly fine without fussing over you, which I find to be OK.
Our second meal was this.




However, you have weigh in the very competitive fares, I’d travel with them again, although for my trip next year, Finnair are doing the Melbourne to Bangkok and Bangkok to Helsinki run on their own metal, which would make me think twice given that the Qatar Airways Qsuites is a complete bonus at the moment between Melbourne and Doha and reverse.

 

[Justinf]

I managed about three hours of sleep as I was knackered from the early start and already long day.
Getting closer to Doha, the first officer announced that air traffic control had slowed us down and we would be in a holding pattern for 45 to 50 minutes because of heavy fog.

 

[Justinf]

And sure enough we were held up and I had a private Doha tour booked, although the driver said he would wait regardless.
We landed at 12.47am, more than hour after our scheduled arrival of 11.45pm.
We also had to take a bus to the terminal and then it took a while to get through customs. Gee the agents aren’t very friendly here. She wanted to see a hotel booking, but I explained the situation and offered to produce my onward BP, but I was let through.
It was 19 degrees in Doha and the fog was immense.
I found my driver and set off, but it soon became very apparent that the fog was going to ruin the trip.