I’d never thought I’d sleep on the Baltic Sea, neither had any of my travel companions. But there we were, unpacking on an engineless boat, docked by the shores of Herrankukkaro. How did we get there? Let’s rewind.

This post is part of the series called ‘Sleep less, dream more’ in which we share uncommon sleeping places and circumstances travelers encountered during their trip. 

Written by Sofie. 

I’m on a blog trip in Finland. We’ve just left the town of Turku, east of Helsinki, and are now heading towards Herrankukkaro (it took me ages before I could pronounce that name).

Herrankukkaro is a small fisher’s village on one of the many islands south of the Finnish mainland, in the Baltic Sea. Only one family used to live there and only one family runs it now, Oscar’s family.

©Sofie
©Sofie

They welcome groups of people here and organize all kinds of outdoor activities for them. There’s no typical hotel though. Visitors stay in one of the many traditional cottages and that’s exactly where we thought we’d be spending the night.

Only, we didn’t.

Oscar didn’t mind our suitcases and walked straight past the cottages, in the direction of the sea. Where was he taking us? Suddenly we saw it: a boat. We’d be sleeping on a boat. Not only that, but to get to the boat we had to walk over a wooden path that prevented us from having to walk through the sea water.

©Sofie.
©Sofie.

This evening was getting more adventurous than I’d anticipated and I didn’t know if I was happy or sad to hear that our hotel boat didn’t have an engine anymore and thus would stay exactly where it was.

The inside of the boat was clean, but basic. Some of the rooms were large whilst others – like the one I was in – were so small you couldn’t even get the bed on photo. We didn’t mind though, as we would spend our evening by the fire outside, in the smoked sauna and at the long dining table Oscar had prepared for us.

©Sofie.
©Sofie.

There’s just one thing we forgot while having fun: the rising water.

You see, when Oscar brought us to the boat to unpack, he’d told us the water was unusually high and that he feared it would keep on rising during the evening. He had reason to fear, because when we returned to our rooms after a late night dinner, the path we’d taken before to get to the boat was flooded. Yes, flooded.

©Sofie.
©Sofie.

What now? We looked for other ways to get there and spotted a narrow passage that only seemed a bit “moist”. I was so happy to be wearing my waterproof snow boots!

Carefully we all took the alternative route and made it to the boat. After sauna, dinner and an adventure like that, we slept like babies.

The next morning the water level had dropped and we could safely roll our suitcase over the wooden path again.

About the author

Sofie Couwenbergh Wonderful WanderingsSofie is a freelance writer and founder of the travel blog Wonderful Wanderings. After more than four years of working for the boss she quit her stable, full time job to create a career of her own and search for her place in this world. On that quest she explores her home country Belgium, where the roots of her old lifestyle lie, and compares her findings with what she finds around the world. That way she hopes to forge her own path and inspire others to do the same. You can connect with Sofie on Facebook.

 

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