Helsinki to Oulo - 600 km - Aug 14

First thing this morning we drove to the airport to check on my bag. The good news is it was found and will be on tomorrow's flight from Toronto. They will send it up to Ivalo in Lapland, and forward it to us when we have an address.  The bad news is it took us half an hour to get out of the airport parade since the instructions were in Finnish.

It was a 7 hour drive north to Oulu, through the Lake District.  There's more water than land in this region, but we only glimpsed the water when  crossed the bridges; otherwise it was a steady scenery of birches, conifers, green hay meadows and red farm buildings.

We had Finnish hamburgers at a truckstop for lunch, the skinniest patty I 've ever seen (the thickness of a tortilla), but the bacon was thicker and very tasty.  They don't skimp on the salt here.

We listened to a lot of Finnish pop music on our drive.  Highlight of the day was some Finnish hiphop, the language is a natural for rapping; full of consonants, it already sounds like beat box.

We arrived at Oulo at 5 pm.  Our campsite is on the seashore; we walked down to the beach to see the restaurant setting up a beer garden with live music; not a good omen for a good night's sleep.

Changerooms at Nallikari beach

Not a problem, we fell asleep as soon as our heads hit the pillow while the music was still playing.  I woke up at 1:30 to silence.  It was still light enough to see inside the tent, we are north of 60 now (65°).