About cars... We rented an EV from OSL and planned to return it there at the end of our trip. Forum-poster Badger said this would be so much easier to get the car from the airport and I am glad to have followed the advice. Never in all my years of car rentals though did I have such a rental experience. No one to show me to the car, no one to check me back in. When I asked about driving an EV a QR code was pointed out for me. I did take pictures before (but not after) the rental and am glad I did. Imagine my surprise when I received an email from Avis/Budget 2 hours after returning the car saying that I returned the car with damages and I would be out almost $1,000. I don't think they thought that I would still be around so I went to the rental desk and demanded explanation. When the clerk told me to look at the damage pictures he was surprised when I told him "they did not send me any" so I followed his advice and emailed the "return services group" and added my pictures, along with one I took of the desk clerk. The next day I got an email saying the issue was resolved and there would be no charges. I am awaiting to see how much of the $500 "hold fee" they decide to keep back... Ugh...
EVs are super fun but it would have been nice to have had an in-service. I suppose I should have looked up "How to Drive a VW ID.3" before leaving. Recharging was pretty straight forward and only once did we get caught low with inoperable chargers, but there were more just 1km further.
Flights were smooth, accommodations clean, and breakfasts tasty. Well, maybe the exception was the Tallinn-version of pickled herring which had very little pickling and more closely resembled cut bait. lol...
Fitbit tracked us and daily steps ran from 10K-20K with 14K steps being the norm.
All in all, a wonderful trip and we only got rained on a couple mornings in Helsinki and Tallinn but it always cleared off by late afternoon. Well, and on the drive back to OSL but we were in the car and that was fine...
Thank you all for your travel tidbits to help make the trip successful. If you want to read my trip diary and have selfie-overdose, look in the comments...
**Final Notes... Doing the maths, I believe the EV charging station fees, if made to be the equivalent of a gas-powered car including the current costs per liter as well as the total kms driven, came to the equivalent of a car getting 61.6 miles per gallon. Had I known better which charger power to use, I might have been able to save a bit more.
Spreadsheet completed and the amount spent on the trip; all fees, gifts and travel items included, came in at $6,589.15.. Budget travel achieved!