Luleå; Wednesday, 01 June, 2022

Despite the very late night I got a decent few hours sleep, but we were still up in time for the surprisingly early finishing breakfast.

With breakfast finished we headed back to our rooms as there was no point in checking out until closer to midday, given our flight wasn’t until 2pm (it had originally been 11am, but got changed multiple times in the six months between booking and actually flying).

After checking out we headed down to the terminal which was just starting to gently melt down as the baggage system had just ground to a halt. Most of the airport runs on self-tagged and dropped bags, which was chaos. Thankfully, as mum needed to have her walker tagged for the hold we had to use a priority service desk which meant our bags were checked in by a member of staff and then we were able to take them round to the oversize belts to have them manually dropped into the system – which was still working.

We then headed up to the lounge to wait, this time already knowing that the flight was delayed by at least 40 minutes. Assistance turned up just as the flight went to go to gate and took us down to the gate, which was almost at the opposite end of the terminal, where we then proceeded to wait even more.

It’s not a good sign when the flight is already an hour late when only at that point does the cabin crew and pilots appear at the gate to get onboard. Eventually we left 90 minutes late, and only just ahead of the next flight of the day to Luleå which followed us from the gate all the way up the country, touching down just a couple of minutes behind us at Luleå.

Thankfully, as we arrived first we were the first to get service so we were very quickly hooked up to a jet bridge, a wheelchair was brough down for mum, a quick stroll through the airport and the bags were already coming round as we reached the belt.

By pure chance, we made it out of the terminal with a couple of minutes to spare before the next bus into town, which meant that we were only about 30 minutes behind where we would have been if we’d been on time and the bags hadn’t been so quick round.

After checking into the hotel and dropping off luggage we went for a wander through Luleå, down to the station to see if it was something that mum could manage in the morning – we decided a taxi would probably be better – and then to find somewhere to eat. In the end we decided to use the restaurant in the hotel and had a very nice dinner.

Mum turned in early so I grabbed my camera and went out for a walk round town to take in some of the other sites, including heading down to the harbour/sound where there had been sightings of whales earlier on, though I didn’t see any.

After stopping off at the cathedral and the towns main square I headed back to the hotel and turned in for the night.