Nicke organised our first family weekend trip last weekend to Mariehamn, the largest monolingual swedish municipality in Finland. We took one of those Viking cruise out on Saturday morning and came back on Sunday evening..The 8 hours cruise ride (to and fro) was interesting as most Finns and Swedes do this to get completely slosh on duty free alcohol and they are there mainly for duty free shopping. Our Singapore version is the Star Cruise where there is alcohol, entertainment and gambling.

Of course being responsible adults, Nicke and I hung around in the family restaurant area which has 2 good size playrooms for the kids. The kids had a great time whilst Nicke and I had really good views of the beautiful archipelago.

The city of Mariehamn is dead quiet. I don’t think I can live here. We were there on a Saturday afternoon and the streets were really empty. Maybe the 11,000 inhabitants were out in the bathhouse in Mariebad or at their casinos!

Jon and Linn loved the bathhouse although it was still cold at 22 degrees temperature. A bathhouse is actually like a ‘country club’ with good swimming facilities and nice water slides for the kids. It costs SGD10 per entry. The only thing is that they heat up the water (A LITTLE). The bathhouse was really crowded!

It was a nice getaway and and we really enjoyed it.