The cities we are in just keep getting prettier and prettier. We absolutely loved Stockholm, with its network of islands, then we arrived in Copenhagen and were blown away again, finding it even prettier. Now we are in Amsterdam, and it has taken it up another step. Part of Copenhagen is called "little Amsterdam", and now we see why. Miles and miles of serene canals, lined with tall gabled houses, brick or painted glossy black. There seems almost no part of it that is not quaintly pretty. Copenhagen is not quite the same, but has an immensely liveable feel to it - wide streets, relaxed atmosphere, nice buildings, and of course some canals as well. And our Australian princess lives nearby too, of course.

What I liked about Stockholm was the slight wild edge to it. The landscape under and around the city is islands of granite and fir trees. You still feel like you are quite far north, and only inches from wilderness. We took a ferry out to a small island on the closest edge of the archipelago (which stretches for tens of kilometres, and on that could almost imagine we were miles from anywhere. You could walk around the whole place in ten minutes, and there were a few cafes and so on, but on parts of it you could stand among stunted trees growing straight from the rock and look out towards heavily forested larger islands, with not a building in sight. We sat on a rock by the edge of the water and watched the sunset - only enhanced by the huge apartment building in the distance towards the west.

In Copenhagen we were totally back in civilisation. It did not at all feel like we were surrounded by dangerous wilderness. It was tamed and artificial, but not in a bad way. It suffered several bad fires in the 18th century, so most of the city dates from then, and of course this provided the opportunity of a rebuild. Hence the roads are wide and straight, with heaps of bike paths. There were nearly as many bikes there as here in Amsterdam, and we got a couple of free ones thanks to a scheme being run by the council and rode around the city for a couple of hours, seeing among other things the "Little Mermaid", a famous statue of a Hans Christian Anderson character. Afterwards we took to the water on a tour boat, which took us around many of the canals of the city, some of which are lined with very expensive-looking yachts - these canals have access to the sea.

Amsterdam of course is even less isolated than Copenhagen, and is dense and lively and gorgeous. In the old centre the streets are often tiny and twisty, and there are canals absolutely everywhere. They are covered in the evening with people out on little boats, leaisurely cruising and having dips and wine. The streets are jammed with people on bikes, all of whom look very cruisy, and there are bikes chained to every pole and fence. I have no idea how the place can be so busy all the time, even during weekdays, but it must have something to do with the tourists - the museums here all have huge queues, unlike anywhere else we've been. At night it seems everyone heads to the red light district, where there are many good bars and pubs, as well as the uniquely Amsterdam establishments; the "coffee" houses. It's not as seedy as I expected, which may have something to do with the beautiful canals running through it, and the fact that people still seem to live there as well.

A catch-up

I realise that I am incredibly far behind, so rather than go into huge detail about each place, I will just do a quick run-through to get up to the current point - Stockholm, where we don´t have easy internet access and also no time to waste. I will fill in more details at a later date for anyone who is interested.

So after Klaipeda we woke early for the bus to Riga. There we stayed in a hostel in part of a hotel, with a great view over the Opera House and a park, in a private room. We made all our own food, as everything was suddenly expensive and there was a good kitchen. The old town of Riga is very nice, and there´s a great few streets in the slightly less old town with amazing art-nouveau architecture. We walked around alot, and only went to a couple of museums, the highlight of which was the occupation museum - not the lightest topic but very informative and moving, covering both the Nazi and Russian occupations. We also went to the cinema to watch Harry Potter, not the most "authentic" Latvian experience, but fun nevertheless.

From Riga we took a one-night trip to Sigulda, a little resort town to the east. There we ate mostly sandwiches, but also ate at a cafeteria-like place which was ok. Margot braved the cable-car across the gorge and we saw some ruiny ruins and took a long walk through a forest which endowed me with around fourteen thousand mozzie bites. There are lots of "adventury" type things in the town, and we took a sort of toboggan mounted on a rail down a steep hill, which was awesome. On the second day we hire bikes for an hour, for which it poured with rain, I mean really the heavens opened, and stopped as soon as we returned the bikes. There were also some more awesome ruins of a slightly less ruined castle.

Back to Riga for a few hours, we snuck back into the unattended hostel to use the internet and the bathroom, very sneaky. Then it was a bus to Tallinn. First impressions of Tallinn is a super modern city with crazy awesome architecture. Our hostel was in a redeveloped industrial area just outside the old town, and feels like a giant modern art installation. The old town is absolutely stunning and amazing and awesome and I couldn´t get enough of it. There are tons of restored mediaeval houses, and the oldest pharmacy in the world, from which we bought panadol and passed on the dried toad. We ate lots and lots of pancakes. There is alot of town wall left and it looks very photogenic. We saw a really cool art museum a bit out of town in a posh park. Partway through we had to change hostels, because everything was suddenly booked out and one and a half times the price. This was apparently due to a Madonna concert, which infuriated me - we were getting free saunas at our hostel. In the new hostel though we made friends with a german guy. We went to dinner in the "oldest pub in Tallinn", then took some horrible drink he´d bought in Riga to a spot on Toompea overlooking the rest of the old town. All in all, I like Tallinn very much.

After Tallinn we took a "ferry", really a bunch of restaurants and bars that happens to float, over to Helsinki. We stayed in a hostel in the old Olympic stadium, which was the only place we could afford. Helsinki feels totally different to the baltic cities - in fact it feels a little like Melbourne, in that Melbourne feels a tiny bit European. We went out on a ferry to Suomelinna, a sea-fort on 5 islands built by the Swedes when they owned Finland. It is very picture-skew, and has people living on it, as well as a bunch of too-expensive museums. The prime noticeable thing about Helsinki is that it is really really expensive. We couldn´t buy anything at all. I checked, and a big mac is 6 euros. So, we walked around alot. But it´s a nice city and feels very cosmopolitan, if not as interesting as Tallinn - it was burnt down and rebuilt in the 18th century.

From Helsinki we also went to a town called Porvoo, a view of more traditional Finnish life. It has cobbled streets combined with painted wooden houses, which is a very pretty effect. We took lunch with us, of course, and spent a lot of time wandering around and poking into little souvenir shops, and taking photos.

After Helsinki, we took the worlds most partying ferry overnight to Stockholm. I won´t regale you with the sordid details of our tax-free wine purchasing activities on board, but suffice to say it was alot of fun. Arrival in Stockholm was marred slightly by the awful hostel, and the price of everything (and no kitchen this time, so´more difficult to feed ourselves). However, after a walk around, we realised that this is probably one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Not only does it have a nice old town, which I always like, it is built across a number of islands, and nestled in an archipelago, so there are channels and canals everywhere and constant water vistas. It´s like Sydney Harbour only flatter and with a fascinating 19th century city build all around it. We met up with an old friend of mine who was studying at Sydney Uni a number of years ago, and he took us on an unparallelled guided tour of the whole city, including a bar at the top of one of the only skyscrapers, with an incredible 360 degree view of the city.

So we´re up to today. We went to a modern art museum, and then my favourite museum that I have ever seen, the Vasa Museum. The Vasa is a huge warship built in 1628, which on its maiden voyage tipped over and sank after 25 minutes. It was preserved for 350 years at the bottom of the sea, almost intact, and they´ve salvaged it and restored and preserved it. It is sitting inside the museum, which is interesting in itself, but every time you turn around and there is this huge black warship that looks like something out of a pirate movie looming over you, and your head just explodes. I don´t think I´ve ever wanted to leave a museum less.

So that´s us up to date. I´m sitting in a 7eleven typing this, so now you know where we are and what we´re doing! I´ll hopefully write more in depth stuff soon, but it will probably wait until I´m back in the UK, judging from past performance.

Nida

On Friday morning (the 24th) we crept out of our dorm nice and early, and headed for the bus station. It's always strange to see that there are people up and about at 6.30 in the morning, when we, at least, are in the habit of sleeping in. Anyway, our bus came, to take us to the edge of the Baltic. The trip was perfectly pleasant, other than the horrible squat toilets at the one stop, and having reached Klaipeda, the bus trundled onto a ferry to cross to the spit, a long piece of land stretching down the coast, enclosing a lagoon. It is forested with conifer and moss, on sandy soil. You'll remember we had headed out here without booking accommodation, which was making M a little nervous. On arriving in Nida, after stops at some other tiny fishing villages, we headed straight for the tourist information office, where we'd heard they could find rooms. However before we even got inside, a tiny woman asked us if we wanted accommodation, and we said yes. She spoke no english, and just a tiny bit of german, but she led us past some dodgy-looking apartment buildings to a very nice new building, and up to a very new apartment. Our room was huge and comfortable, and only 100 litas a night. Which is about 50 bucks, for the two of us. We were pretty happy.

Having settled in, we went to explore the town. It is super-cute. Rows of brown and blue painted cottages, and nice gardens. A nice little harbour (the town is on the lagoon side), and paths through the forest up to the enormous sand dune. We walked up it, and the view was wonderful - we could see Russia. That's the bit of Russia tucked in between Lithuania and Poland, and cut off from the rest of the country. I can't really remember what we did for the rest of the day. We went to the supermarket at some point and bought food, and wandered around a bit looking at the village. We went for dinner at CiliPica, the local mass eatery type place on the harbour, which has decent cheap food. Oh, we had lunch at a nice little cafe recommended by the guide book.

The next day we hired bikes and rode for a long way through the forest up the spit, then across to the baltic side to the beach. Then back to town for some lunch at the same cafe, then we rode to Russia. We couldn´t go in, obviously, and couldn´t really even get close - there was a big no-man´s land between the customs houses on each side. But we took some forbidden photos and sort of milled about a bit. Then we rode to the proper beach, where all the people were. Very popular, despite the rather bracing water. We had dinner again at the same place, then took a beer and went up the sand dune to drink it overlooking the town as darkness descended. Very pretty.

The next day we were to leave, and had seen everything, so spent the day cafe-hopping, having a small beer and a snack in each one. We were quite sleepy by the time the bus came to take us back to the mainland, and Margot almost fell asleep on someone - the bus was absolutely packed full. Our hostel in Klaipeda was horrible and small and dirty and the mattresses were more like a bunch of rocks in a sheet, but it was right next to the bus station for the next morning, and in that was totally ok.