You can't build a sandcastle here

Day 3 - Helsinki to Dover (England) 

Our body clocks weren't in sync with the local time zone yet so we were both wide awake at 4am. We headed down for a very early breakfast, surprised to find there were already lots of people up and eating.

It was only a two minute walk from the hotel to the departures terminal where we checked in for our flight. We were flying into Heathrow for the first time, the only other time we've been to the UK we flew in and out of Bristol.

The flight was only three hours, we landed around 9am, retrieved our luggage then walked for about ten minutes through a long underground walkway to collect our rental car. Of course they didn't have the car we had booked, but we resisted the attempts to convince us to pay "just a little bit extra" for a larger car, finally walking away with the larger car and no increase in price! After finding the car the next thing we had to do was google how to put the car into reverse, it turns out the controls were on a stalk on the steering wheel!

Traffic out of Heathrow was very busy, so figuring out a new car while working out where to go was a bit tricky, but we finally were on our way to Dover for our first stop in the UK. 

We arrived in Dover a while before we could check in so we decided to visit the White Cliffs, only to find that the car park was full. So, we parked the car, dropped off our luggage, and spent the afternoon walking along the promenade, watching the ferries crossing the channel and wondering how people could lie on such a pebbly beach!

We were pretty tired so had a very early dinner at at a nice Italian restaurant with water views, before going to bed around 7:30pm.