The hop over to the mainland Finland from Åland turned out to be more a long, long swim. If we did indeed sail to Helsinki, we had over 10 hours to go; we cut this a bit shorter by heading to Turku, and making a 2 hour drive at a much more moderate 130kph.
Fede and I had two things on our agenda for the (late) evening:
1) Visit Jaakko and Aino, a Finnish couple who I had met during my PhD time. We had already spent 2 weeks together in Finland for a workshop on TMS-EEG (look it up, I dare you!)
2) Pick up Juan from the airport
The problem was that after dealing with potentially the most inefficient ferry-boat exiting ever, we were 1 hour later than planned. So, our short visit became ever shorter, and after a quick 10 minute hello, we arrived at the airport to fetch Juan. Fede had to be back at the airport the next morning at 6am, and dropping her off signified the closing of the 2nd leg of the trip.
Eric McDermott