Åland Island - Part II

Today was one of those fabulous travel days that make it all worthwhile. And I say that even though we travel up to 180 days in a year and never have a bad day. Today was one of the best.

Carita's husband Lief

Cherie has ancestors here who had communicated with America not long ago. Cherie wrote a letter to that address and whoever might be living there now. The response and followup conversations led to the current resident Carita showing us around the island and helping both of us find out more about ancestors. Cherie learned a lot because Carita is living on the property her relatives inhabited.

The book has pictures and descriptions of every house on the islands.
It's like an illustrated census.

Carita is an absolutely divine individual. She loves life and everything about it. She laughs a lot and the only time she isn’t smiling is when she is thinking about how to help us find more information about our relatives. She gave us a bit of a tour and took us to her winter home where she perused Cherie’s documents, translated several of them, and managed to get her husband Leif and friend Folke to come by to help even more. In the process of all that Leif set up a meeting with a relative of my brother-in-law Roy for tomorrow. Carita will meet us, take us there, and help by translating since Tage speaks no English.

Every hour the bridge opens saving hours for each boat.

The old hand-operated bridge now part of the park.

As we approached noon, we left that house to do a bit of touristing at the Lemland Canal. Built by the Russians during their occupation of Finland, it cut several hours off the transit from one side of the island to another. Today it is a beautiful park highlighted by the hourly opening of the canal to large boats. The old hand-operated bridge is still there, too. After removing it, they made it part of the park.

From there, Carita took us to her summer home which is one of the most beautiful places to live we have seen. She has created a beautiful garden landscape with several places to relax and contemplate nature. We sat for a couple of hours on her deck enjoying beer, coffee, and cheese and crackers. Over the 2-3 hours we talked about nearly everything including the meaning of life and how to enjoy it.

When Leif came home from work (He owns an auto mechanic shop), we had a couple more beers before Clarita took us back to our hotel. For dinner we drove down to Åss Restaurant on the water where we had another great meal featuring local items.. I don’t think we have had anything other than excellence in dining every time we have dined out this trip. We must be doing something right.

A busy restaurant on a lovely summer evening.

Tomorrow Carita will help us with our visit to Tage Johansen, Roy’s relative, and then we will take a longer drive around the island.