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.