July 3, 2013
Wednesday 3 July 2013 – Helsinki to Riga
Doing laundry has proved to be a major challenge during the expedition and generally avoided until absolute emergency. We had a late breakfast in our hotel in Espoo and decided to deal with the laundry issue in a professional laundry facility in a mall. We had somewhat limited time because of our Tallinn ferry connection later in the afternoon, but thought two and a half hours would be plenty, to wash and dry our clothes, especially since it would be done by professionals in a laundry facility…we couldn’t have been more wrong!
At first our laundry professional wanted a week to do the wash…which would have set us about a week late for the ferry. After a long debate she agreed to have it done by 12:30, which just worked out for our busy schedule. 12:30 on the dot, we were there to pick up our belongings. All nice and clean, but…there had not been enough time to dry it. We were now stuck with two weeks of dripping wet laundry. While waiting for the ferry we hung everything to dry inside the pick up and the van…not ideal but no other convenient alternatives available.
We had a quick lunch by the ferry terminal and said good bye to Hanna from Oceana’s Baltic office.
The ferry ride was about two hours and brought us to Tallinn around 18:00. We then started to drive south, aiming for a hotel just before Riga.