August 2024

Easy to come, hard to leave.

It's the most beautiful day in the world.

We're standing in a huge field of flowers, stretching on into birch forests. Bees zip around, ignoring us. The only sound is a warm breeze cutting beneath the brilliant blue sky. We picnic and birdwatch as the sun sinks below the horizon on this summer afternoon in the Åland Islands.

This not-so-remote but not-so-visited archipelago has always fascinated me because I never heard anything about it. Owned by Finland, speaking Swedish (and usually English and Finnish), it's a summertime paradise with verdant fields, gorgeous forests, endless coastline, and long, long days.

We came here by ferry from Turku, Finland for a week with a rental car, staying at a tiny cabin in the middle of the woods, before taking another ferry to Sweden.

Our experience? It's a very humble land, of extremely polite and down-to-earth people, and a quaint, organized society, without too much to do - in a good way! We spent the days doing different hikes, birdwatching at different lakes and coastlines, and walking around pretty Mariehamn. Despite having seen so much of the main island over a week, I felt like I could just escape the world and stay here for ever. It's not a place I wanted to leave.