Today was our last day. It’s a little hard to believe that we’ve been out of town for four weeks. We’ve been to so many places and seen so many things, but it’s time to come home.

Since we’ve started, we’ve only really been out in relatively remote nature once, back in Glasgow. Like Glasgow, Stockholm is not really built for tourists. There is a wealth of history, and some beautiful free museums, but there’s only so many museums and walking tours one can do in a city. So we decided to take a day trip out to the archipelago.

There are many boats to and from Stockholm that service various islands all the way out to Finland. We hopped aboard a boat heading for Grinda, a small island that’s remote enough to enjoy some quiet walks and maybe some beach time.

The boat ride took about two hours from the city center. Our boat was a relatively small steamboat with low ceilings and lower hanging lights that I would occasionally bump my head on. We situated ourselves so that we could look out at the passing boats, seabirds, and house speckled islands.

Upon arrival, we walked up the main path towards the few buildings on the island: a cafe, a restaurant, a farm, and a hostel. The family in front of us had two young boys that were excited at nearly everything they found in the ditch adjacent to the walking path. They first found some blueberries, and excitedly showed them to us. They then found some small wild strawberries and showed those to us (“it’s heaven”), making sure that we know not to eat the other small red berries after they saw us foraging on our own (“don’t eat those”). We then repaid the favor by finding a snake (“they bite, but they don’t hurt”).

The gray skies did not end up clearing up as the forecast predicted, but we didn’t let that stop us. We spent much of the day wandering around small unmarked trails eating a few handfuls of the blueberries that crowded the island. It’s as if the entire island is a blueberry farm that got overrun by trees.

Returning to the main area, we decided to grab lunch at the restaurant. Looking at the prices of the restaurant, we decided to grab lunch at the café. We shared two sandwiches, a bag of cheez doodles, and a contraband bottle of wine.

The rest of the day resulted us climbing to the very top of the island, a whopping 30 meters above sea level. We missed our boat back, so we waited for the next one an hour and fifteen minutes later.

The boat trip back was on a modern boat, that had more low hanging overhead shelves that I hit my head on.

We closed the evening out by getting a kebab at a place recommended by our Australian tour guide yesterday, then by getting ice cream and waffles recommended by our Arkansan tour guide yesterday.

We are now at home, diligently catching up with the blog before we start our trek home tomorrow. I’m going to cut this short because I’m going to wake up in three hours! If we don’t write any more, thanks for reading! Photos will be added when we have time, so check back!