Mariehamn; Friday, 14 June, 2024

My alarm went off less than 7 hours after my head had hit the pillow and after grabbing breakfast I checked out and headed over to the airport to check-in for my flight over to Mariehamn.

A smooth journey through the airport, and 30 minutes before our departure time we were all on a bus and heading over to the plane, looking like an early departure. The bus pulled up by the plane, waited for 5 minutes and then promptly drove all the way back to the gate that we had boarded the bus at. Just as it was arriving back at the gate the drive got a call on his radio at which point he put his foot down and drove back to the plane – no idea what happened there, and the onboard crew on the flight didn’t know either.

Everyone had boarded just before our departure time of 9am, helped by it being a small plane (Fokker 50) and barely a half full flight. We pushed back a few minutes late and then the pilot put his foot down and we went at a fair old lick to the edge of the runway before our 30 minute flight over to Mariehamn. With the quick taxiing at Stockholm we ended up landing on time and with only hand luggage I was through the small airport in under 15 seconds.

I had originally planned to head into town and do some exploring, as originally I wasn’t going to be able to checkin to the apartment until 16:00, but on landing I got a message through the Booking.com app to say that the apartment was available now if I wanted to checkin early, so I arranged to meet at the property at 12, which gave me an hour to walk the 3Km from the airport to the apartment.

It was a very pleasant walk, helped by the glorious weather, and I ended up arriving a few minutes early but the apartment owner was already there so I was able to checkin, dump most of my stuff and then head out. I started out by heading down to the nearby bike rental shop to hire a bike for my stay as I intended on using that to get around more of the island. After taking charge of the bike I headed off in towards town, stopping off first over by the East coast at Lilla Holmen. This small island is home to an almost tropical looking sandy beach, as well as a small aviary home to a number of birds as well as rabbits.

From Lilla Holmen I followed the east coast path back up towards the centre of town stopping off at the small Sjökvarteret maritime museum and then the Sjöfararkapellet a small chapel close to the harbour. After looking around these I then headed over to the Nabben Badplats to take in the views back to the town centre.

A long cycle back round the edge of the town and into the centre before I parked up the bike and had a wander through the pedestrianised centre of town, stopping off for a very late lunch at a local burger joint before heading over to the Torget and then to the park in front of the Town Hall.

Having taken in most of the centre of town I quickly headed over to a supermarket to pick up some groceries for dinners and breakfasts in the apartment and then cycled back to my home for the trip.

A little later I headed out for another bike ride, this time heading south out of the town centre and town to The Beautiful Road, a string of bridges across islands and islets that link the main island to some of the southern islands – it’s a spectacular structure and I spent quite a bit of time taking photos before hopping back on the bike and heading back to the apartment for a well deserved early night.