Mariehamn; Sunday, 16 June, 2024

After the glorious weather of the previous couple of days it had clearly changed overnight as it was pretty grey and cloudy, and, after breakfast, when I went to get the bike to take it back to the hire shop I needed several bits of kitchen roll to get it dry enough to ride.

Having dropped off the bike I headed along the harbourside to visit two of the main museums in town, the Ålands sjöfartsmuseum and the Segelfartyget Pommern. The sjöfartsmuseum, or maritime museum tells the seafaring story of the islands and it’s people from row boats up to the modern cruise ferries, whilst the Tall Ship Pommern moored next to the museum gives you an opportunity to explore a turn of the 20th century tall sail ship, one of the last of the breed to be built for trade before engines took over.

Visit completed I headed the short distance back to the apartment, packed my bag and sent a checkout message to the owner before heading off into town.

From the two museums over by the West Harbour it was about a 1Km walk right across town to two museums over by the East Harbour – the countries cultural historical museum and the art gallery, all combined into one in the Ålands kulturhistoriska museum.

Whilst the art gallery side didn’t hold much interest for me, the historical museum was really well laid out in chronological order detailing the slowly uplifting islands (much like Scotland, they’re still rebounding from millennia of being covered by ice in the last ice age) through the earliest humans, Swedish and then Russian Rule before autonomy under Finland.

Having ticked off pretty much all the museums in Mariehamn, and with only about 50 minutes to kill before I needed to start making my way back out to the airport I decided to grab some lunch in the same burger restaurant I’d had lunch in on Friday, though over the weekend either there had been a sudden shortage, or more likely a run, on Halloumi, so rather than my preferred Halloumiburger I had to make do with a standard meaty one.

Lunch completed I walked the 3 miles or so back to the airport, with the clouds slowly starting to part towards the end of the walk with a little bit of sun shining through.

Mariehamn airport itself is very small, there is just the one checkin desk which opens, alongside security, just 60 minutes before departure. Checkin closes 30 minutes before departure, which is the point where the lady manning the checkin desk came through security and started up the computer at the single gate. 15 minutes later and the boarding process started, completed in less than 5 minutes and a good 5 minutes ahead of schedule we pushed back from Mariehamn and headed towards Stockholm, in a flight that only lasted 25 minutes, and because of the hours time difference, meant I ended up landing in Stockholm 35 minutes before I left Mariehamn!

This was of course the one time that I really wouldn’t have minded a lengthy delay as all the early arrival did was extend my wait until my onward flight to London back over the five hour mark, which even taking the most circuitous route from Terminal 5 over to Terminal 2 still had me sitting in the lounge for well over 3 hours before it was finally time to head to the gate and start the final leg home.