Three bridges to Oland Island

A blue sky was over us as we awoke bright and early for our last day of long driving for the moment to get to our destination of Sweden. We managed to get the twins out of bed at a ridiculous hour, for them, and were on the road at 7.30. We started on the island of Funen, the second largest Danish island, and because in the dry weather Danish motorways are fairly chill we had crossed the very impressive bridge onto Old Zealand, the largest in no time at all. Then it was a quick zip past Copenhagen before a tunnel then another impressive bridge to take us to Sweden. The border control into Sweden was much more in line with my expectations, there were several booths but all were un(wo)manned so we could just drive straight through. That was a couple of hours in to the drive so it was time for a switch of drivers. We stopped at some services and needed a bit of a snack, and coffee, to keep us going. Because we had left so early this morning we didn’t have a chance to pick up any Danish pastries so we had to grab some of the lesser known but equally tasty Swedish pastries.
Jess had a spell of driving and it was all fairly uneventful, it seems like my plan of only including long straws had paid off. As I sat there I was looking out for amusing place names but I was out of luck, as we sped past Kallax, Songesand and Friheten I just felt like we were driving through an Ikea store. We needed to pick a couple of things up for the van en route to our next stop so with a bit of Ecosia research I was able to identify that Biltema was the place to go, one of the reviews described it as Ikea for men. I explained this to the twins but I think they may have got the wrong end of the stick and had visions of shelves full of Swedish men to browse through as they disappeared for a while. They also had a cafe where we all managed to get fed for about 13 euros. Gourmet it was not, but the price was right.
One last leg today and it was like the rest of the day, no real issues. One last bridge as well and it took us over to Oland, an island off the coast of Sweden. We made our way to the north and a campsite we had randomly picked, it seems pretty nice and we all quite happy to be stopping for a few days. After over 30 hours of driving and more than 2300kms we all need a bit of a rest. We strolled down to the beach for some fresh air and to stretch our legs. I had a little paddle and while I don’t want to say it was cold, it certainly was Baltic. I hopped out pretty quickly when I saw few small jellyfish near me but it turns out they are fairly harmless. We are all fed and mostly cleaned and ready to relax for a few days, it’s good to have finally made it.Read more