Day 25: Catching the ferry to Helsinki

follow the pink line

We had to get everything else back into our panniers and to load our bikes onto the back of the Suzi.  No worries there, we have done that several times now! The weather wasn’t very good riding weather – cool and wet again – so we were thankful to be sitting inside the Suzuki, zipping along the E18.  It’s around to 200km to Stockholm and we did take one detour into a service station to top up our sugar levels.

Soon we were unloaded in the car park near the ferry terminal.  This is where Matias and I launched our adventures to the Baltic Sea in 2010, so it was quite familiar.  We hugged Agnete & Anders goodbye and waved them off on their way back to normality.

waiting for the ferry in Stockholm

Karina and I then lined up with the bikies waiting to be loaded onto the Silja line ferry – ie cruise ship – MS Serenade.  Soon we were riding into the bowels of the ferry and this time we were allowed to store our bikes in a locked store room.  So we only took up to our cabin the things we needed overnight.

waiting to board

Our cabin was very comfortable – twin beds, tiny en suite – and a large square window, not the usual port hole. 

Tenth Level - Cabin 1012

 We went up to the upper deck and strolled around nursing a plastic cup of cider.  We stayed up there as the ferry left the terminal at 5pm, gliding thru the still waters of the Stockholm Archipelago. There is hardly any feeling of motion, except things slide past quickly.  There's no feeling of being on the water. The very large black-backed gulls flew past at eye level, tempting me to take their photos, but its always the same – so hard to focus on such a contrasting moving target!

black backed sea gull cruising by!

After we got fully chilled we went down into the duty free shops to have a look at what was on offer – yep!  Toblerone and lots of booze.  I bought Michael a set of Swedish snaps – flavoured aquavit that has to be skåll-ed at midsummer, xmas or whenever there are hardy guests. 

So back to our cabins to catch some shut eye so that we are bright-eyed for our arrival in Helsinki at 9am.  I managed to take some photos of the sun going down into the sea  at 9:43pm, but we still continued to glide past outlying islands.

Lighthouse

Viking ferry ahead

Skol!

sunset soon

9:43pm