The Aland Islands

Managing to wake up in time for our 5:45 train to Turku on Monday, we headed to the west coast of Helsinki to catch a "short" ferry to the Aland islands. Six hours later, we arrived in Mariehamn. After setting up our tent near the beach, we took a stroll through "downtown" and grabbed a reindeer burger as a late lunch. We picked up food at the market for dinner and then walked through the woods back to our campsite. A quick pasta dinner and we were asleep by 8:30 pm.

Ten hours later, we awoke to a quick but vicious thunderstorm. After the rain cleared up and the sun came out, we decided to rent bikes and ride around the island. We planned a picnic lunch and rode through the countryside before stopping to eat on the beach. We spent the rest of the afternoon on our bikes, stopping only to read the map and get some ice cream. We went back to camp and put on our "Sunday best." We rode back to town for dinner at Niska's Pizzeria where we had dinner on the waterfront, which would've been perfect for sunset except that the sun was still high above at 8pm. To cap off the evening, we went to a high lookout point before returning to camp. Because it was still light out, we played cards until about 1am before calling it a night (er, day?). This morning, we woke up, packed up, hiked to the port and hopped on a ferry to Stockholm.