It's not Finnish-ed yet!

As I sit here, ocean side, with only 20km between us and Finland, I think back to how I ended up here. Arriving in Sweden, my 'plan', well vague plan anyway, was to spend maybe a couple of weeks exploring Sweden- its nature mainly, reunite with old friends and then continue over to Norway for a date with the fjords, but after Stockholm, plans changed...

Let's rewind a bit shall we?

So, I got to tick an amazing event off my bucket list, spending Midsummer in Sweden, and with Swedish friends. Lis and I had the best time in Stockholm, going out for breakfast in the old city, making Midsummer flower crowns from scratch, indulging in some traditional Swedish food for Midsummer brunch and of course drinking schnapps with new friends in the sun. It was a Midsummer different from years gone by, but as Lis told me, this was one of the only years the sun shone all day and the rain held back. We had blue skies all day in fact.

From Stockholm, Gimli and I headed towards Uppsala but not without an important stop at Karl's house aka Jonathan, my former ship buddy. We spent the afternoon in the sun, catching up on each other's lives and laughing about old times and getting to meet his family again. It was so much fun and so nice to see him after two years.
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The reunions continued as we arrived in Uppsala and I got to spend the day with my first Camino friend, Carolin from two years ago. She took me around the beautiful town and we drank a few glasses of wine/beer under the Swedish sun. It was bliss, to come all this way and feel so at home, reuniting with these special friends and because of Swedens lack of 'lockdown', life was completely normal everywhere you went.

The next few weeks involved many forest walks, beach swims, lake views and yet another reunion. It turned out that my friend Paddy from Wexford, who I had only met in Salamanca when this road trip to Sweden began, decided to head towards Scandinavia himself. Three times we ended up in the same town, and we got to catch up and share stories and travel info, he even brought ice cream, like a real Irish visitor. We had similar plans and were both heading north to Finland and on Into Norway. It was nice to know a fellow Irish person wouldn't be too far away in case I needed help and at one point I did!

My plan to head to Finland was rather spontaneous considering the journey was so long, to the border, however I thought to myself, now is my chance to drive the whole coast, take my time, see lapland and the arctic circle by road, see more of Finland than just Helsinki, and eventually arrive in Norway.

What an adventure it would be.

Now, with only a few kms to the Finnish border, I still don't know if I will be allowed to cross, but so far we have had no issues so let's see what happens. Maybe the luck of the Irish is real after all! Maggie has had a check from the mechanic, I am stocked up with affordable Swedish food and we are ready to relax around here until July 13th (Irish people can enter Finland then apparently), when we will hopefully cross the border and head to see Santa in Rovaniemi.

The whole scenario seems so normal to me at this point, having driven almost 8k kms across 6 borders so far, but I know one day I will look back on this mad adventure and laugh at how crazy it all was, but for now, its adventure time!