Finland Finally, Well Sort Of

Today, Thursday, we are in Mariehamn, Aland, Finland.  We arrived early and the forecast called for rain in the afternoon, so we walked off the ship just after 10 am to walk around the town. The day had started out mostly sunny, but, by the time we went out, the clouds were building and the wind was blowing.  Can you tell?

We walked along the Esplanade with interesting buildings on either side.

And there was this sign near the Russian consulate building.

When we had crossed over to the other side of the peninsula, we walked along the waterfront.

We heard and saw many birds including Barnacle Geese with babies . . .

. . . and this mama gull watching over her baby.

Continuing on, we came to Lilla Holmen Beach.

Then we walked to the Market Square and the Torggaten pedestrian street.

On our way back to the ship, we visited Mariehamn Museum which housed an amazing collection of miniature models of the city.  These models, representing Mariehamn in the 1920's, were built by a group of retirees starting in 1987.  It took over 25 years to complete.

After leaving the museum, we made a very fortunate wrong turn.  We had intended to walk back to the ship.  It had just started raining when we realized that our wrong turn took us to the shuttle bus stop so we were able to make the return keeping dry and warm.

In the port terminal, the shop was selling this award winning mustard.  We, of course, bought some.  We can't wait to taste it when we return home.

We really enjoyed Mariehamn, another new port for us.  We saw many hiking trails and just wished that the weather was better so we could have taken advantage of them.

Finland brings our country count to 10.  So, why did I say "sort of" in the title?  Mariehamn is part of the Aland, an autonomous region which encompasses 6700 islands in the Gulf of Bothnia.  But culturally it is very much Swedish, including the official language.  This came about in the 1920's when a compromise was reached where 2 other regions were ceded to Sweden while Aland was given to Finland.

We have found the people in both Sweden and Finland to be very friendly and willing to converse freely.  I believe that it is ingrained in them to adhere to Rule of Civility Number 66:

Be not forward but friendly and courteous; the first to salute hear and answer & be not pensive when it's a time to converse.

Peace and blessings,

Linda and Larry