First Impressions of the Land of Potable Toilet Water

On August 16, we arrived in Finland.  At 1 in the morning.  And so our first adventure was sleeping in the Helsinki airport.  Now, before you think we had no way of getting to our hotel or some mix up happened with our reservation, let me state that we excitedly opted to spend the night in the airport. While our ticket to Finland was a great deal, we were unable to find a hostel, hotel, airbnb room, etc within our budget.  When we read on www.sleepinginairports.net (yes, it is a real website) that the Helsinki airport is the 3rd best in the world to sleep in, we decided that was just what we would do to help keep costs down.  Apparently so did a ton of other people because by the time we landed all the benches were already taken and we found ourselves sleeping on the floor (we had our sleeping bags). We didn't mind though - with free and ridiculously fast wifi, a grocery store, adorable dogs waiting to greet their owners, and clean facilities, the airport proved nicer than half of the places we've stayed.   

When Brian was finally able to tear me away from the airport (I was seriously considering moving in), we discovered a city equally as impressive.

Cool architecture:

People with a sense of humor:

Restaurant Day!  (a day when anyone can open a restaurant anywhere)

(Mexican food made by real Mexicans! Made us miss Denver.)

But what truly wowed us was when upon asking if it was safe to drink the tap water, the staff at our hostel shared that Finland's water is so clean even the water in the toilets is potable.  My mouth dropped open and I excitedly exclaimed, "Really?!"  The staff laughed at my enthusiastic reaction and that's when it hit me that maybe we'd been roughing it a little too long -- I was just as excited about sleeping on an airport floor and potable toilet water as I'd been while touring the Great Wall, hiking the Himalayas, and standing inside the Great Pyramid.  

In case you're wondering, the tap water in Finland is fantastic.  As for the toilet water...we just took the staff at their word ;-)