today is our last day in scandinavia (well, technically not really the last day, as our flight is tomorrow - but it is so early, it does not really count as a day). before we checked out and left the hotel i stepped out on the terrace and saw the cat from yesterday again, it was hunting a mouse in a wood pile. and it was successful - the mouse ended up dead; poor rodent. generally, it seemed to me there are a lot of mice here in finland. they seem to like it here a lot; except when there is a cat around. then we drove to the next hotel to check in our luggage. next step was to fill the fuel tank of the car, clean the car, and return it. this meant we had no car any more. and also no radio. which actually was a good thing though, because radio here means there are about five well known bands like michael jackson, madonna, elton john, or bryan adams, and each day there is a different song from each band. this applies to all radio stations, although they all seem to be well coordinated, as they at least all play different songs. so you get a good load of songs from each one of them over the day; and only from them. well, as an interlude you get the one new song from coldplay. but then again, only this one song. so in short, radio here is horror - bring your own music device or suffer. once the car was returned, we took the same coaches as on day three again to get to helsinki city[01-40]. this time the vanha kauppahalli[05-06], the old market hall, was opened; and so we walked in. lots of cafes, bistros and little food shops inside, everything looked delicious, lovely arranged and nicely decorated. then we ambled along the harbour area[02-32]. a lot of people were going for a walk, having picnics in large groups, sitting and drinking, or just having fun with activities like bungee jumping, at the kaivopuisto park[15-32], aka brunnsparken. of course also the ubiquitous waterfowl was around. there were a lot of geese[21-31], right in the middle of the town, surrounded by people, but they did not seem to mind too much. instead they were grazing the greens of the park. then we went to a moomin shop, but unfortunately it had no (black) t-shirts for men, only kids and women. too bad, i so much wanted to buy a moomin shirt. well, maybe i will find one online one day... after a little more hanging out in various shops and malls we called it a day, and drove back to the hotel. so we were back again at the holiday inn at helsinki airport, where we already had stayed for the third night when flying to ivalo. the aeroplane will leave at 08:30 o'clock tomorrow morning, so this means we have to get to the airport early. on this last day it was warm and sunny with highs around 23°C. and here is some stuff for the statistics department: * kilometres driven with (private) rental car: 6074km * 1870 pictures made it to the galleries, track for day 17. multi track, or single track map for the entire trip (unfortunately maps.google only allows to add a maximum of ten tracks per map).