Daryl & Heather Overland

This is the way that a lot of things end up. We started with such good intentions: Daryl - 'We can write one post about each country', Heather - 'Sounds like a great idea, I'll do the next one!'. But then you kind of get caught up in being on holiday or places try to rip you off with internet prices and you get a bit behind. So, without any disrespect to the countries of Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Russia, here's a few highlights from the Riga-Tallinn-Helsinki-St Petersburg part of our trip.

Our stay in Riga included the first (and probably only) 4-star action of our travels. We ate massive breakfasts (included), had baths (first since October), and the hotel gave me a free box of chocolates for my birthday. If you like a good market then try to fit Riga into your itinerary - the Central Market is held inside five old zeppelin hangers and spreads for quite a distance outside too. Make sure you remember to bring a plastic bottle to fill with fresh milk.

We took a classy bus from Riga to Tallinn - it had a free coffee machine - and added one more car stamp to our passports. My mum would love Tallinn, it's full of shops jam-packed with crafty goodness. However, the only shop we spent money at was the supermarket. Santa (Jouluvana) had his own little cabin set up in the main town square. We were surprised to find that Estonian Santa had five sheep grazing out the back of his cabin. What happened to the reindeer?

Our question was answered after a short ferry ride to Helsinki, where we ate reindeer ham and cooked reindeer meat with mashed potatoes. Yum. Here we stayed with a friend (who has a sauna) and relaxed for a few days. Daryl particularly enjoyed his relaxing on the Playstation3. Helsinki is a lot more like western Europe and not one bit like St Petersburg.

Which brings us up to date (in a very quick and not including all of the food way). For the first time since Romania we really look like tourists again. There has been a great deal of pointing and miming going on and we have been reduced to counting metro stops to make sure we get off at the right one! Today we went to a museum that had no English words inside it at all - and we loved it! (This was the Leningrad blockade museum - learning more and more about wars). Tomorrow we are off to Moscow on a sleeper train. And then on to China on the 28th. Hopefully we'll get one more post done before then, but this is a big Merry Christmas from us (I have no idea how to say it in Russian, but it's not their Christmas until 7th January anyway)!!

# posted by Heather   5 comments    Post a Comment