It was an incredible trip!
Here are some of our favorite photos from the trip (each photo is a thumbnail linked to a higher quality picture.):
100) When we got moving it was a short drive into the city of Savonlinnea. This must be a lovely place because even on a grey and misty day we liked it. Our first stop was the 15th century fortress of Olavinlinna. We got there when they opened and bought a Finland national museum pass that is good at a huge number of attractions around the country. Over the next few weeks we definitely got our money out of it...in fact if we’d known about it two weeks earlier it would already have already paid for itself. Anyway, once we got squared away with the passes we scampered through the maze of stone passages to catch up with the first tour (in English!) of the day. Very interesting with some history, some culture, some folklore and even a token ghost story. The castle was an active frontier defensive site for Denmark, Sweden and Russia over a 400 year period so it was modified as weapons evolved from crossbows to blunder buses to cannons. The most interesting part is that for about 40 years there has been a world class opera festival held in the castle for the month of July. Tickets appeared to be sold put but they had a ticket office onsite that opened at 6pm to sell unclaimed tickets for that night’s performance... We went back in the evening and could have attended if we had been willing to pay 500 Euro for a private box seat but we nix’ed that idea and thus we just missed out.
101) Anyway, after the castle we walked to downtown Savonlinna to trade money for hot tea and wifi. Once we were finished with those we hit up the internet to find a cheap, good lunch spot - a swing and a miss. The burger joint we were directed to was cheap but was fast food quality. Oh well, it was good for our travel budget so it wasn’t all bad. Our shiny new museum passes gave us free entry into the Riihisaari museum with is the regional culture museum. Another very well done exhibit space with art, history, local celebrity and local culture all covered. We considered sticking around for another day to try again for opera tickets but ultimately decided we have other things we want to see. We drove on to our next stop - a provincial forestry museum (which is a big deal in a country where forest products have been the primary economic driver for 600 years) were we set up for the night in their spacious free parking lot.
102) A variety of building materials ended up being a theme of the day. We started the day literally on the front door of our first stop since we camped outside in their parking lot last night - the Lusto Finnish Forestry Museum. Forestry makes up a significant portion of Finland’s economy so this museum was part history museum but also definitely some heavy industry lobbying - it was interesting but clearly biased. Still it would be difficult to understand Finland without learning about forestry so it was worth the visit. It was a beautiful space - interesting architecture and as expected almost entirely made of timber. So, the building material of wood was first on our list for the day.
103) Our next stop was just a quick side trip but it satisfied the motorcycle geek in me. Our route took us through the city of Imatra. There was once a motorcycle racing circuit made of the city streets going through part of Imatra so we took a moment to pull off the main road and drove a lap. After that quick diversion we headed to our second attraction for the day - Veijo Rönkkösen‘s Patsaspuisto Sculpture Garden. This is a roadside picnic area that houses hundreds of concrete sculptures by the Finnish artist Veijo Rönkkösen. Most of the sculptures are of human figures - all made with dentures and glass eyes so they are somewhat eerie looking. We wandered around the garden for about half an hour and then made a picnic lunch which we ate in a gazebo alongside the garden. A worthy stop and it added concrete to our list of building materials.
104) Our final destination for the day was another lakeside, summer vacation city - Lappeenranta. Built on the shore of Lake Saimaa around a 18th century fortress and just a stone’s throw from the Russian border - all the signs here are in dual language: Finnish and Russian and there are street signs pointing to the border station. We found a free parking area just outside the walls of the fortress in easy walking distance of the major sights. We did a quick exploration of the waterfront this evening and found the spot where the largest sand castle in Europe (Adorned with a couple dozen sand sculptures) is built every summer. Very artistic, the descriptions provided some cultural history information about this area and it capped off our list for the day by showing us sand as a building material. We headed back to the camper for dinner and settled in for the night.
105) Today we did a whirlwind tour of the Lappeenranta Fortress. This is a sprawling early 18th century fortress built on a peninsula sticking out into Lake Saimaa. What is so cool about visiting it is that all the old buildings - barracks, armories, hospital wards, stables and administrative buildings - have been turned into museums, art galleries, cafes and even an art school. It is a terrific tourist location with a lot of interesting things to see all in an interesting historic site. It should not be a surprise to anyone that has been following our trip that we started with a visit to the art museum. It was spread across two buildings and had a modest collection of works by Finnish painters but what knocked our proverbial socks off was a special exhibit on local artist Väinö Rautio. We loved all of his work that was on display. Next we went to the South Carelia Museum which is the local history museum. We learned about the area but what we liked the best was their special exhibit on Siberian folk lore (another clear sign of just how close, both physically and culturally, this is to Russia.) Next up was a special exhibit in one of the old storage warehouses on the treatment of the mentally ill in the city (IE: ex-fortress) hospital. Very well done and very moving which was in keeping with the exhibition’s title - the Museum of Emotions. Next door was the small Cavalry Museum which gave a military overview of the Danish/Swedish/Russian/Finnish military units drawn from this area over the past 300 years. We again started to suffer from museum overload so we headed to the cute harbor area to actually eat a meal in a real sit-down restaurant. It was a buffet place with traditional hardy Finnish food - pork chops, potatoes, bacon, rice, grilled vegetables and dense bread. They also had a salad bar which worked for the vegetarian! We rolled ourselves out of the restaurant not wanting to think about food only to find a fruit stand selling fresh berries. We bought a liter of fresh strawberries to have once we can eat again. Our final swing through the fortress brought us to the art school, a ceramics gallery and finally to a little artists co-op gallery. All interesting to see but nothing so tempting that we felt compelled to break out our wallets. We got back to the camper-van early enough in the afternoon that we decided to pick up and head on to the west. We spent nearly four hours driving along the southern edge of the lake district and dropped anchor in a public park in the huge city of Tampere.
106) The day started early - around midnight actually. Pyynikki park is beautiful with green grass, tall trees, a peaceful lake shore beach area, an outdoor theater and lots of parking lots. However, it turns out that one of those parking lots is where the testosterone fueled Finns go in their fast cars to do burnouts and drifting in the middle of the night. Fortunately, we were out of earshot of said parking lot but the road in went right past where we were parked so we heard them going in and out throughout the night. Not obnoxious but invasive enough at times to wake us up even with earplugs in. The "artwork" (in the medium of tire rubber on asphalt) we saw this morning was expressive, expansive and evoked definite emotions. Once we got moving we unloaded the bicycles and pedaled off to see Tampere. Shock and surprise, our first stop was *not* an art museum!?! Instead, we started our day with the Amuri Worker Housing Museum. This place is outstanding! Starting in the mid-1800s wooden, single story shared housing was built to house workers in the rapidly industrializing city. These residential blocks were residences for the lower classes for 100 years until being torn down in the 1970s. One block was preserved and the buildings there have been restored to represent each decade over that century with stories about the people that lived in the rooms, the story of the industrial boom and bust, the two world wars, independence and the civil war, the depression and much more. I was awed and wish more places could show and tell their stories in such a compelling way.
107) Next, we pedaled to, you guessed it, an art museum. Bizarrely, the Sara Hilden Museum is located *inside* an amusement park which lead to the surreal moment of us standing next to an artificial lazy river asking a woman in a cat costume where the contemporary art museum was located. I half expected her to answer "you are in it." Anyway, we did find it and enjoyed it. Some really interesting works and a very nice space, even if hearing kids screaming from rollercoasters took the magic out of their outdoor sculpture garden. Next we went up the 400ft tall observation tower for a fabulous 360 degree panoramic view out over the city of Tampere, Lake Näsijärvi, Lake Pyhäjärvi and the amusement park directly below. We had great weather so the view was perfect as well!
108) It was time for lunch so we started pedaling across town to find a recommended bistro. Unfortunately, as we crossed a road in a crosswalk the opposite curb wasn’t "ramped" but was a 5” high sharp edged stone curb. Jonna hit it wrong and she got dumped into that sharp curb on her right side. Her elbow split open and she got some big bruises on her arm, leg and hand. Curb 1, Jonna 0. Thankfully, she was spared any broken bones but it was close - rock and asphalt are unforgiving. We limped to the bistro only to find it closed. That meant a painful ride back across town and over the city’s famous river rapids (on a lovely, though unappreciated at the time, pedestrian bridge.) We found the city’s historic market hall and inside settled on an inexpensive Japanese Ramen stall. We cleaned up Jonna’s arm, relaxed at a table while eating good food and, with a full belly, got some ibuprofen into the patient.
109) Jonna felt like continuing our sightseeing so we walked back over the pedestrian bridge to a block of massive brick buildings which were once the home of a Finnish industrial giant - the Finlayson cotton plant. The space is now a cultural center with a constantly changing set of exhibitions. There were a staggering 10 different exhibitions: a postal service museum, a natural history museum, a city history museum, an exhibit on the 1918 civil war, a history of theater in the city, an interactive retrospective on Finnish games (board games to video games), a collection of gemstones, a museum of dolls, a museum display about the history of vampire stories and finally the Finnish Hockey Hall of Fame. Honestly, they were all presented in different ways but all of them were as good an exhibit as any I’ve ever seen. The curation, presentation, artistic sense and methods of organization were just amazing. For example, the entire postal museum was multi-language in 4 different languages, highly interactive, designed to engage many different senses and was both educational and entertaining - and it was about *the post office*!?!?! The only one we didn’t enjoy was the hockey section and that was just because we were so fried from museum overload that we didn’t look at it. I bet it was fascinating as well and we don’t even like hockey. Anyway, if this breathless description does convey it I was very impressed with what Tampere has done with the Vaprikki Art Centre.
110) One of the exhibits in the Vaprikki Art Centre was one the history of video games. It was half of one *large* floor and the entry contained this colorful display with all the different early video game controllers.
111) Jonna took to the stage in the Theater Museum! Then that was a enough for us - figuratively dazed and literally bruised we walked back to the bikes, rode back through the beautiful Pyynikki park, loaded up the camper and hit the road. We thought about staying another day - there were still a Lenin Museum and the Moomin cartoon Museum to see but the siren song of a new town to visit was just too strong so we headed west. We stopped for the night at a quiet campground next to an off-season ski resort in order to get the camper topped back up (batteries and water), emptied out (grey and black water), get us showered and get a good night’s sleep.
112) We saw a quote in a Finnish museum earlier on this trip that said "If pine tar, vodka or a sauna can’t cure it then it will probably kill you." Well, we aren’t drinking any vodka or eating any pine tar but tonight we finally put the healing power of a Finnish sauna to the test. After a tough day yesterday today started great. There was a hiking trail next to the campground and with a name like Pirunvuori (Devil’s Mountain) how could we resist? It was a nice forest hike with a cool cave at the end (yes, the folklore of the area says this was once the Devil’s abode before the ringing of the local church bells ran him off). The cave was nice but a different dwelling was the real highlight. In 1906 the Finnish artist Emil Danielsson had a stout three story stone studio built on the side of the "mountain" using massive boulders for the walls - no mortar just moss stuffed in the cracks to seal it. It is now called the Stone Castle and it was beautiful. A good hike with interesting sights is a perfect way to start the day.
113) We got driving just before noon and headed west toward the west coast of Finland. Just outside Rauma we turned off the main road to visit Sammallahdenmäki - a UNESCO World Heritage Site protecting around three dozen Bronze Age burial sites. These are 3,000 year old stone cairns which contain charred bones and some small tokens from cremated dead. Unfortunately, the site is just being built so the only information was a sign board at the trailhead. It was weird to be walking through such a profoundly historic site with nothing to protect it. Just a poster at the trailhead and some small trail markers on the trees. No rangers, no boardwalks, no chains blocking off the rock piles. Not even signs explaining what they were. It was like just taking a walk through the woods only the things around you are rare artifacts of humankind’s history. Anyway, the lack of information made them monotonous pretty quickly so we left without hiking the whole trail.
114) From there we drove to the historic old town of Rauma which is another UNESCO site, though one from a much more recent era relatively speaking. Rauma was one of the first chartered cities in what is now Finland and after a few fires the wooden buildings built in the 18th century survived in mass and are now protected as a rare glimpse into the architecture and city planning of that time. Like our feeling in visiting the UNESCO site of Bergen, Norway we were underwhelmed by Rauma, Finland. I know it isn’t realistic to expect cities to be preserved as museums but having clothing boutiques, pizzerias and knick-knack shops in old buildings just takes away the charm. It was nice to walk down cobblestone streets between old wooden buildings but ultimately we weren’t going to shop so it wasn’t any more interesting than seeing unlabeled burial cairns had been. We found a Chinese restaurant for lunch, walked through the displays in the tourist information center and rushed through a local art museum (we arrived 15 minutes before it closed) before leaving.
115) We had planned to camp at a beach parking lot in "new" Rauma but it was pretty busy so we turned south. We found an empty park area in a rural wooded area with a sauna for the locals. Since we were the only ones around we stoked up a fire and enjoyed what was basically an indoor campfire. We could hear an owl hooting in the evening and a local passing by told us that lynx frequent this area. Much better than a crowded beach parking lot in a city!
116) After a quiet night camping in the woods our plan for today was to head to the big city of Turku. We found a free parking lot right downtown and right on the bank of the Aura River. From there we walked the scenic riverside walking path to the downtown tourist information center. With a multi-day plan sketched out we crossed over the river and went to the Aboa Vetus/Ars Nova Museum. This a combination archeology site, history museum and art gallery. The archeology and history section is based in an excavation beneath the street level that is unearthing 13th and 14th century medieval building foundations that were buried over time. Very interesting to see the street layout, the building methods and all the artifacts that have been found. The art gallery half of the museum was really a compelling space that integrates some of the medieval ruins but also parts of a 19th century palace that had been built on the ground above the buried earlier buildings. Unfortunately, we didn’t find either of the artists being exhibited nearly as compelling as the gallery space. Next we walked through a nice urban park and to the Luostarinmäki Handicrafts Museum. This is another open air, living museum - IE: old buildings, restored to period appropriate condition and with people playing the roles of people of that time. This one has two things that make it unique: First, all of the 18th & 19th century buildings are original and in situ. Second, the focus is primarily on folk skills with the history, culture and lifestyle being secondary. For example, there might be a home of a weaver and it would be an authentic home but the person in that space is telling the story of weaving - how weaving was done, showing off the tools of the trade and actually making woven goods. Anyway, the site is large with a couple of dozen blocks of buildings - probably 50-ish individual rooms and probably half of those have people in costume and in character that are demonstrating skills. Very well done and very engaging. We were there right up until they closed the doors for the evening. Seeing people doing these so called folk skills really made me appreciate the people’s ability to *make* something - whether it was weaving or pottery or candles or wood carving or glass making or any of the other skills that we saw. There is simplicity and focus on the craft that is appealing when seen from our modern complex world. At this point you can stick a fork in us because we were done...we dragged ourselves through the streets to get back to the camper and then drove to the island of Ruissalo (just to the west of downtown Turku) and parked for the night in the parking lot of a trailhead next to the botanical garden.
117) We really did Turku from west to east today. We got moving early in order to beat the Monday morning commuter crowd to the free long-term parking spots downtown. Our plan worked because we got one of the last two empty spots in the 12 hour lot. Wohoo! With parking for the day secured we unloaded the bikes and pedaled to a coffee shop to swap Euros for tea and wifi. Once the clocks ticked over to 10am we cycled out to the west end of the Aura River to where Turku Castle is located. We entered as soon as the gates opened and after two hours we finally left...Not because we were finished but because we wanted to eat our picnic lunch before the 1pm walking tour we reserved yesterday. Turku Castle has an impressive history and presents its 700 years in a very engaging way - another very well done museum and a lot more knowledge crammed into our brains.
118) We bicycled back to the tourist information, locked up the bikes and crossed over the river to eat our sandwiches/snacks on a bench looking out over the Aura River - it had that classic European feel - a river with stone piers, old buildings lining the waterfront, blooming flowers and little cafes adding splashes of color and the spire of a medieval cathedral high above it all. A very enjoyable moment! At 1pm we returned to tourist information and met up with Yucca the tour guide. For the next hour and a half we walked along the southern bank of the river with our guide pointing out history buildings, public art pieces, telling funny stories, recommending places to eat, describing museums and otherwise giving an entertaining and informative tour. The tour ended at the Turku Cathedral and we walked back to the starting point on our own. But the day was still young! No way we are calling it a day at just 3pm. The old market hall was nearby and like others we have seen on this trip it is now an upscale shopping area with boutique groceries, food stalls, cafes, bakeries, butcher counters and cheese mongers. We walked through to scope out all the options but decided to save our money for now. Across the street were some fancy shops selling locally made clothes and jewelry. We aren’t shoppers but after seeing the traditional folk crafts yesterday it was interesting to see modern handmade products made in Turku. We decided to spend the rest of the day seeing some things that were far enough away from downtown that we would drive, rather than bike, to them. First was returning to the island where we camped last night to see the local university’s botanical garden. It was expansive but more of a research garden than a decorative one - not manicured for aesthetics but just chock full of plants, scrubs, trees, flowers, crops and herbs. We enjoyed walking around to look at it all even if it lacked the "wow" factor of gardens we saw in Copenhagen and Tromsø. Our next stop turned out to be a bust but for the motorcycle racing friends the great Jarno Saarinen was from Turku and is supposedly buried in the city cemetery. Despite a solid effort to find his grave it didn't work out. Heading back towards the river we found Fleming Park. Sadly, this is a neglected green space so it wasn’t much to look at but then again maybe that is an appropriate look for my namesake. Next we drove out to one of the islands on the south side of the river mouth (opposite the island where we camped last night) to visit St. Henry's Ecumenical Art Chapel - a uniquely architected chapel that looks looks like an overturned boat hull. It was closed for the day so we couldn’t see the interior but we did walk around outside to enjoy the design. Whew, that may have been as exhausting for you to read as it was for us to do!
119) We decided to do something different for the night so we headed north to the shore of Haunisten Lake to camp for the night. We were so tired when we arrived we actually didn’t walked the 50 feet to see the lake! One way we entertained ourselves in the camper-van was to play Yahtzee. We bought a Denmark themed Yahtzee set when we were in Copenhagen and often broke out the dice in the evening.
120) I knew I was an important person and you pesky lot weren’t giving me the power I deserved. Well, today I found out it was true! We got moving early today to take care of a few domestic errands. (Things, by the way, I wouldn’t have to do if I just had a few servants around taking care of me...but I digress.) Our first site to visit for the day was Louhisaari Manor. During our walking tour yesterday the guide commented that since my last name was Fleming I should go visit Louhisaari. Well, he was right! Back in the mid-1400s the king of Sweden granted land all over the kingdom to a Dutch (aka Flemish) mercenary and created a noble family with the name Fleming. For over 400 years that family served the Swedish crown (one of the family achieving the role of Admiral of the Swedish Navy) and held this manor house in Finland. In 1795 the family finally sold the house to the Mannerheims. If that name rings a bell it is because the great-grandson of that Mannerheim buyer became leader of the Finnish military in WWII and then a two term President of the country. So we got a private tour in English - clearly they recognized our importance and made all those other visitors join the Finnish language tour. Take that plebeians! This manor house was built in the mid-1600s and still has original wall and ceiling decorations, doors and windows. The third floor is furnished with period correct items to reflect the 17th century Flemings. Then the second floor is furnished with late 18th century belongings to reflect the Mannerheim ownership period. Lots of great history, a very entertaining guide and proof that the Fleming name should be venerated. What more could we want? Reluctantly, we left this shrine to the Flemings and headed back to Turku. We, with some delays and difficulty, parked in the same riverside parking lot we had used yesterday and bicycled back to the downtown area. We had scouted the old market hall yesterday so we headed back there to get lunch today so Jonna could get some fresh local fish (Baltic Herring) and so I could get my blood-pizza level back up to non-life threatening levels. (Once I am returned to my rightful aristocratic status I shall have my underlings bring me pizza on a set schedule so this isn’t a problem in the future.) After lunch we walked to the Turku Art Museum and went through all their exhibits - my favorite was a video short of a remote control snowboarding doll done in the format of a Warren Miller style adventure skiing movie. After that we bicycled to a public pool to see about showering but the cost was too high so we decided instead to drive out to a campground back on the island of Ruissalo. We paid for a basic spot (IE: no power hookups), immediately took showers and then cooked dinner in the camper. It is a big, kind of nondescript campground but we have an early ferry to catch tomorrow morning out this direction so it should work out.
121) We started the day with one big boat and ended it with another. We woke up earlier than usual because we had an appointment we had to make - a ferry out to the Åland Islands. There is a long story behind how this chain of islands became a semi-autonomous, Swedish-speaking part of Finland. It was a 5 hour sail on a cruise-ship sized ferry but in the early afternoon we drove off the boat and into the main city of Mariehamn. We drove a few blocks and found a free parking spot where we could leave the camper while we explored the town. It was interesting straight away because there was a classic car show at the marina where we parked so our camper was surrounded with 1950s Cadillacs, Chevies and Fords. Just a block away was the Åland Museum which is a dual exhibition space: part history museum, part art museum. We continued to get good value out of our museum card since it got us into all the museums today for free. The history museum was very informative (it explained that long story I mentioned above) and contained a lot of interesting artifacts. The art museum was very small but we liked all four of the exhibitions they had on display.
122) After the museum we took a walk around downtown Mariehamn - ostensibly to see the town but realistically to get ice cream. After enjoying our Softis (aka soft serve cones) we returned to the camper to unload the bicycles so we could pedal to the other side of town in order to visit the Åland Maritime Museum. This is also a dual museum: the actual museum building which details the maritime history of the Åland Islanders, and the ship museum of the Pommern, a 1903 four-masted barque that is docked outside. The huge ship is open to tour and had museum exhibits inside that told the story of the last of the sailing ships from the early 1900s. Just walking around thinking of the crew on its long voyages to/from Australia was a great experience. Photos, quotes, artifacts and audio sound effects all helped fill in the story. When the Maritime Museum closed we biked back to the camper, looked around the marina area a little to see about camping there. We decided to instead look for something a little quieter so we fired up our camping app, found a likely spot on an adjacent island and drove 30 minutes to the parking lot of a little beach. After a few local families finished swimming and headed home we had the place to ourselves!
123) We started with our standard "wake, eat & go". We had a castle to storm and we intended to have fun doing it! Actually, we first had a ruined fortress to visit so the storming of the castle would have to wait. In the mid-1800s the Russian Empire spent 30 years and a lot of money building the massive fortress complex of Bomarsund on the Åland Islands. Unfortunately for them the rapid improvements in artillery technology meant it took a combined British and French naval and land forces just 48 hours to smash it to bits during the Crimean War. As part of the war’s peace agreement the Russians agreed to demilitarize the Åland Islands so the ruins still stand today as they were. There was a tiny museum and not much to see but the fragments of walls and towers gave some idea of how large the fortifications once were.
124) From there we backtracked to Kastelholm Castle which is a semi-restored medieval castle. It is a fine castle but after we have visited so many other castles and forts on this trip we weren’t that impressed. Still, how often does an American get to walk around a 13th century castle so we did appreciate it for what it was... we aren’t yet totally jaded from our travels.
125) With two fortresses already under our belts before noon we shifted focus and went to look at a beach. Västervik beach is a small family beach with a small sandy patch and a floating platform with multiple levels of diving boards. There were already three families there so we skipped settling in but we did stick around for a few minutes to watch some of the kids jump off the high dive. With lunchtime approaching we drove to the Marskogens Lamm Sheep Farm. In addition to their livestock pastures they also have a cafe serving local products. We had panini sandwiches, lemonade and a pancake dessert - all of it made with local Åland ingredients. The cafe had a lovely garden seating area so we had a serene pastoral view to go with our meal. On our drive to the farm we saw a sign for a nearby photography museum. Clearly something right up our alley so we headed there next. We found the Ålands Fotografiska Museum which isn’t a museum of photographs but is instead a museum about the history of photography. There were probably three thousand different items - many hundred cameras from the earliest to modern DSLRs along with lenses, flashes, film, movie cameras, movie projectors, film processing equipment, entire studio and dark room setups and much more. It was presented without any context or explanation but just the sheer size of the collection was worth the cost of admission.
126) We decided to give another beach a try in the afternoon and the description of Bambölevik beach looked promising. We got there to find the main parking lot full and the overflow one muddy. A one wheel driver camper doesn’t do well on soft ground. Thankfully, a family helped give us a push and got the rear wheel back onto solid ground. Whew! We abandoned the beach idea and fell back on our old stand-by - go find an art museum! Luckily, we got to the Önningeby Museum before it closed and got to look around. It was fantastic! At the end of the 1800s an art colony of Swedish and Finnish artists moved into the tiny village of Önningeby and for a couple of decades they operated an artist’s cooperative. The little museum had a small collection of works by artists from that group and had a nice short film that tells the story. Satisfied with our day we next turned our attention to where to camp for the night. Our first idea was to drive up north to the island of Hällo. That parking lot was full so we did some more digging and found a little beach called Lötö with a equally little parking lot. It was empty! So for the night we had a quiet spot to ourselves with a water view out the window and just a couple of swans as neighbors.
127) Our lunch yesterday was made entirely from local products from the Åland Islands. Today we took a different approach to sightseeing by individually visiting different businesses to sample their specialities and, in doing so, we criss-crossed over a few different islands and thus got to see a lot of the landscape. After we got moving in the morning our first destination was the Johannas Hembakta bakery. Fresh baked goods made with all local ingredients. We taste-tested a blueberry danish and rated it "delicious". The drinks we had with yesterday’s lunch were fruit flavored lemonades from a local beverage company so after the bakery our second visit was to the Amalias Limonadfabrik company. They make over a dozen different flavor concoctions all with a lightly sweetened lemonade as the base. Yesterday we had rhubarb-elderflower and blueberry lemonades so today we tried cranberry and strawberry-mint-lime lemonades. All four were very different and all superb! This may be what I miss the most on this vacation as a food and drink experience. Yum! Our panini sandwiches yesterday used a local halloumi cheese that had just the right fat content to melt well when heated. A little googling turned up the dairy - Mattas Gårdsmejeri. In addition to cheese they supposedly make incredible ice cream but they were out. This was a travesty and it was only with great restraint that I was prevented from recking great vengeance upon the place. However, that soul withering disappointment didn’t stop us from buying some of their cheese. Next time, I will not be so lenient for their thoughtlessness. No ice cream!?!? Harumph!
128) With the morning’s culinarily inspired exploration done we thought we would be smart and head to our desired camping spot early so we could just laze around all afternoon. We’d spotted a marina with camper parking in the tiny village of Hamnsunds way up on the north coast of the island of Saltvik. We parked at a parking lot on the edge of the village, ate lunch in the camper and then walked down to check out the place. The village is so quaint to looks like a photo shoot for a tourist brochure. A single lane road winding through little wooden fishing cottages that are painted red with white trim. Even handmade wooden boats bobbed in the harbor. There are maybe a dozen houses in the village, all clustered around a store and a cafe. The cafe also handles both the dock and the parking lot. Unfortunately, but totally understandably, the locals get first shot at both. The lady at the cafe basically said that no reservations for parking (nor access to the shower and electrical plug-ins) were taken and no non-local could park at the marina until after 8pm. After that is was first come-first served until she went home at 9:30pm. We pondered the situation over ice cream cones but ultimately decided we were unwilling to wait around for 6 hours without any assurance we would get a spot. Since we wanted showers and to recharge the camper’s batteries we reluctantly cranked back up and headed out to find another option. What we found was basically on the opposite corner of the main islands. Way over on the south coast of Eckerö Island is the Degersand Resort. They are a large campground with cabins, powered sites for campers and natural sites for tents. However, they are on one of the largest beaches on the islands and that was a big selling point. Jonna spent the afternoon sitting with her toes in the sand and the sun on her face. She even took a very brief dip into the Baltic Sea...she said she channeled her brother Jamie before dunking into the chilly water. We have really enjoyed the Åland Islands. They have a very laid back feeling - definitely a place where bicycles and sea kayaks are the right speed. Something we read said these islands are the sunniest area in all of the Nordic countries and our three days of perfect weather would attest to that. The landscape is relatively flat but lush with farms making up most of the islands. There is only one city and surprisingly few villages but there is always an ice cream kiosk nearby (in the ice cream brand wars we are definitely team Pingviini and have spurned the Ingman kiosks.) Even the sightseeing sights feel "small town" but that has been okay. It goes with the place feeling underdeveloped as a tourist destination and (as tourists) we like that.
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