Caught the viking line ferry in the morning heading east to the Aland islands. The trip was really nice having secured a seat at the top of the ferry with great views. The sea across was choppy when we hit open water but soon died down heading in to the port of mariehamn.

The Aland islands are made up of a hell of a lot of different sized islands, it is owned by finland but they speak swedish and use euros like Finland.

At arriving in mariehamn we headed to the information centre hoping to book up boat fishing or ice diving. After about half an hour it bacame clear it was cloased season and no one was able to take us out unless we wanted to ice fish for perch, we thought we could do that on the Grand union canal around Lonon so didnt bother. In the end we found a car rental place and decided to head their the next day.

That night we hit the town heads held high, but no where to go everything was cloased except a small bar and a stange casion where we played poker and meet a gentlemen from Luton, very strange!

The next day we headed out to rent a car, luke was driving on the other side on ice with no road markings! All satrted well but then luke thought he was back in blighty and turned up the wrong way as locals stared at us with interest, but we survived!

We spent the day driving from south to north, by this time luke had mastered the driving and only killed a small handfull of locals. As the day went on we started argue like a pair of old women over directions and where to go but one thing was sure nothing was open!

We eneded up heading to a castle we had heard about, but it was not open so we just walked around the grounds. We then got on a cable ferry boat heading to another island in search of a cuppa but that was cloased to.

In the end we headed back to the hotel with a thought in mind, dont go the the aland islands in winter everyting is closed!

That night we looked into travelling to Helsinki and found it was quicker to head north on the ferry to a place called Turku and take the train down.