Finland

One thing that Tucan Travel does that I like, is to give us a list of suggested activities for each city we visit.  As much as there was plenty to keep us occupied in Tallinn, one of the suggested activities for that city was to catch the ferry to Helsinki, because I think it's the closest point in Eastern Europe to cross from.  So, in order to tick another country off our lists and to make our lives as busy as we could, Amanda and Steve, Julie and Ian, Kat, Adrian, Tony and I all decided we'd do it.

The ferry we wanted to catch left from Tallinn at 730am, so we figured we’d get taxis and 7am and be there by 710am, and that’d be heaps of time. Wrong. They shut off ticket sales twenty minutes before the boat left. Luckily, there’s not one but five ferry companies that sail between Tallinn and Helsinki. So there was another one leaving in an hour, from a different terminal. So we ran outside and grabbed a taxi and rushed over to the next terminal. The taxi had to do two rounds, but we got all there and we all got tickets just in time to get on the boat.

Personally, I was expecting something reasonably small, with maybe a small kiosk where you could buy coffee and a bag of chips, but these ferries are HUGE. When I looked at it I thought it was about the same as the InterIslander (which sails between the North and South Islands in NZ – for all my non-NZ friends!!), but when I got on board I realised it was far bigger. There was a cafe with a breakfast buffet where we were, and I know there was at least one more café, and that’s only what was in the near vicinity.

It took three bloody hours to get across to Helsinki, during which time we basically shot the breeze. Adrian went to sleep on the table, as he tends to do. He’s 28, and he owns his own business, property managing about three apartment blocks, so something like 260 units. He works far more than what I was doing, seven days a week and far longer hours. He doesn’t employ any staff, so it’s really all on him. Of course as soon as he got here and his phone stopped ringing, he started sleeping all the time. Every time we’re not doing something productive, he’ll be nodding off. He was a bit embarrassed because he had the lowest country count of the group of us, but really he’s achieved far more than most of us have. Hear hear - from Kat.

Church.  Will research significance and proper name.

Part of the Sibelius monument.

By the time we actually got to Helsinki, it was about 11am. Amanda had organised us all into planning on being there at 930am (love you Amanda!), so 11am wasn’t tooooooooooooooo bad I guess. We found a taxi van who could take the seven of us (Tony wanted to wander off and do his own thing), paid him €50 between us, and he took us for an hour around the best sights in Helsinki. There was nothing much to write home about. I quite liked the Church in the Rock and so did Kat (she’s watching over my shoulder, can you tell?), but most of the group thought it was a bit crap. We also went to the Sibelius monument, which was fun to take photos of. It was a very funny tour, there were six cruise ships in so about 12,000 tourists in town, so the traffic was so bad that the roads were almost at a stop, and we had about five minutes to run round the tourists and take photos at each site before we got back on the bus. The driver was excellent though, he spoke really good English and he could answer our questions about the things he was showing us.

Organ, rock wall, roof supports of the Church in the Rock.

  

The town is really really really really pretty. We had lunch on the main street down by the waterfront, but it was odd because they kept telling us they didn’t have stuff that was on the menu. In the end we had the choice of about four different items, from a menu of at least ten. What we did have was really nice, but we were there at 1210pm and we were a bit puzzled that they were in this situation at this point. Ian and Adrian, our business men, were totally taken aback. I wasn’t too bothered, I know what it’s like when you get totally taken and you weren’t really expecting it and you can’t spare someone to go to the supermarket. And it was such a pretty street and so warm in the sun.

That's potentially Ian's shoulder in the very bottom left, Julie, and Adrian,

amid many many tourists.  The whole street, and all the attractions, were totally packed.

After lunch Adrian and I went to the park and ate ice cream, while Amanda and Kat shopped, and everyone else amused themselves as they saw fit. Amanda bought The Most Beautiful Pair of Shoes Ever.  I tried to steal them and Julie tried to wheedle them off her but neither of us succeeded.  Amanda's about 5 foot 10 and a half, so I probably could've fit these shoes.

We’d got Tony to check the ferry timetable for us before we got off the boat, and decided we’d aim for the 430pm sailing with Tallink to get back. So we wandered around the market at the waterfront, then spent 30min trying to find a taxi, and got to the terminal at about 315pm. We went to buy tickets, and the girl at the counter said “there is no 430pm sailing, only 530pm”. Bugger. We kinda failed on the ferry sailings all round with the whole Finland trip. Never mind, we’re all on holiday and we didn’t have anywhere we needed to be, we’d only planned on going home then so that we’d still have some time for another look around Tallinn. So we sat in the bar and drank beer while we waited for the ferry.

Bye Finland!!!

Estonia

"Look in the Kitchen", apparently.

We caught a public coach to Estonia, which meant six hours on a bus. Sweeeet times. I was sitting next to Adrian, who made the mistake of taking the window seat and not swapping when I offered, twice, and then wound up with the person in front of him lying on his lap for the last three or four hours. Poor Adrian. Neither of us is what you’d call small, so we were also sitting pretty much on top of each other the whole way. Not that I particularly minded.

That morning was the first time since we’d been in St Petersburg that it hadn’t rained. As soon as we sat down on the bus though, it started. There was a screen on the bus showing the temperature outside, and in ten minutes, it dropped ten degrees. The landscape is really flat and wide and open, and there were these enormous clouds above us. It absolutely poured and there was thunder and lightning right above us. The clouds were amazing, I could see up the side of them where they were about to meet, and they were incredibly thick.

We didn’t see the landscape between Moscow and St Petersburg because it was dark and we were theoretically sleeping, but between St Petersburg and Estonia it was just flat all the way. It’s very green and there’s lots of natural forest, unlike NZ where all the pine trees are in straight rows. Outside of the cities, it’s very untamed.

We had to cross the border from Russia to Estonia (of course) which was a bit of a palaver. When we exited Russia we had to all get off the bus, take all our luggage (hand luggage as well as packs), have it all x-rayed, and stand in line with the fifty other people off our coach to get our passports stamped. And they were not in any rush to do it. Then we loaded everything back on the bus, drove across the border to Estonia, and waited on the bus while they took all our passports away and checked them again. There was lot of time spent sitting on the bus going nowhere. The border crossing took well over an hour in the end.

It’s quite funny how the landscape changes at the border. Estonia was much more groomed looking. Lots more open spaces. It’s also not so run down as Russia, St Petersburg in particular was grimy and around the edges could’ve really used a lot of work on the buildings. Both countries have this amazing habit of leaving any building that they stop using to just rot. There are even buildings in the middle of cities with the roof caved in.

So we made it to Tallinn, the capital. There was group of eight of us that had already decided we wanted to get the ferry to Helsinki in Finland the next day (Helsinki makes me laugh every time I hear the word… any Little Britain fans will understand), so Tony took us on a city walk that night. We arrived at our hotel at about 730pm, so it was 8pm before we left to go for our walk. The old town is really beautiful, all the buildings are very prettily coloured and there are lots of winding cobblestoned streets.

Tallinn Town Square

We had a quick look at the outside of a couple of churches and took photos at the best look out spots, but then most of us suddenly decided we couldn’t wait any longer to eat. So we ate. I wound up at a medieval restaurant, having a medieval feast with Kat, Amanda and Steve, and Ian and Julie. IT WAS AMAZING. So much food. So much amazing food. I can’t even begin to describe it, I’ll just have to see if I can steal some of Amanda’s photos to put on here. I was too busy eating. The service was excellent as well, from everybody we came across in Estonia, but particularly the young guy who served us at this restaurant.

This is the photo the waiter took of Kat, Steve, Amanda, Julie, Ian and me.

Lucky Amanda and Steve are so lovely and emailed me some of their (better) photos.

Kat, Steve, Amanda, Julie, Ian, and me at Old Hansa Medieval Restaurant.

 

The Feast of a Lifetime.

Medieval brews - cinnamon beer... which was surprisingly good.

Previous three photos by Amanda and Steve Tilley 

We got home at something like 1130pm, and we decided to meet at 7am to get to the ferry terminal for Helsinki. I’ll write about that on a different blog.

Ian and Julie are amazing. Ian has worked in property development for well over twenty years, building apartment blocks and that sort of thing, and I think these days he travels something like six months of every year. He adores history and natural history, and he’s incredibly knowledgeable and interesting. He has a great way of explaining things, so that it’s really easy to follow and really interesting. Jess, you’d love him and Steve, they’re total WWII buffs. Steve served in the Australian army for over 20 years. Ian’s writing a thesis on something about the war that I can’t currently remember.

When we got to Latvia, Ian was going to be entering his 100th country. Julie’s not far behind him, this would be her 85th. Personally, it’d be my 27th, but I’m pretty good with that considering my age. They leave us in Poland, but Ian’s already been talking about the next trips he wants to do. And he wants to do at least one that I know of before Christmas.

We arrived back from Finland at about 730pm, so we thought we’d go for a wander round the old town and find something for dinner. We got a taxi to town, then found ourselves in the square, and we decided to go to a wine bar we’d spotted the previous evening for a glass of wine while we figured out what to do for dinner.

We left the wine bar around 1130pm. It was a good night. Good wine and very entertaining company. Amanda in particular is hilarious, and doesn't seem to have an off switch.

The Estonian people are really lovely. Tallinn’s become a real tourist centre, but they cope with it incredibly well. Everybody who served us at any restaurant or bar spoke excellent English and was friendly and smiled and gave lovely service for the entire time we were there. Even the poor girl at the wine bar, who the boys fancied. She was very pretty, in quite a Scandinavian way.

We should probably have gone home a little earlier that night, because the next day we had to leave the hotel at 9am to get to the bus for Latvia and I know there was at least one headache on board (not mine, Kat’s!!).

Happy 100th Ian!

This is the photo Tony took of me and Kat,

after I cropped the top half of the photo of and lightened the whole thing. 

He's a bit of a pro.

St Petersburg

The thing that I didn’t talk about in my Moscow blog was the people. The fashion in particular. It’s like they’re twenty years behind the western world, which to be fair they probably are, with good reason, but it was also very hit and miss. Some people looked great. Some looked terrible. Amanda and Steve were told by some friends before they got to Russia to look out for “Ruski's”, and to photograph them and put the best photo of the day on the net. Of course we all got involved in that. I personally have not posted any of them on the net… until now. One thing that really amazed us was that all the women wear high heels, everywhere. Even though there are lots of rough footpaths and roads and cobblestones. Crazy.  I particularly like the tights here:

The overnight train from Moscow was far better than I had expected (after overnight trains in Egypt where we didn’t have individual compartments and we were in upright seats hanging onto our bags all night). Pat was a bit shocked that nobody was coming to make the beds for us. The beds were relatively long and comfy but not ideal, I didn’t sleep much more than an hour or two, and Adrian didn’t really sleep at all.


We got to St Petersburg at 630am, but our hotel wouldn’t check us in until 2pm. So we went out for an orientation walk. We were all sooooo tired. I enjoyed St Petersburg, but I liked Moscow better somehow… St Petersburg is dirtier, a lot of buildings have dirt and soot on them. When we left Russia, I knew I could’ve spent another week in Moscow really happily, but I’d seen pretty much everything I wanted to in St Petersburg.

View from our hotel window.

Not the view from our hotel window.

After lunch that day, we had a guided tour at the Hermitage Museum, which is in the old Winter Palace, for two hours. I personally think it would’ve been better to have done the tour in the morning, or the next day, because we were all exhausted and out of patience. We had been warned that the guide wouldn’t wait if we were dawdling, because the museum is so huge and we had such a short time to see it in, but she was actually starting to talk when there were only one or two people there, out of the 15 of us. She was also talking really quietly, and with the number of other people and other tours in the place, we didn’t have a hope of hearing her unless we happened to be standing right on top of her. The first two people lost patience about ten minutes in and buggered off to wander around by themselves. I made it to 45 minutes, and by then I could see that Amanda (who has had a hip replacement) was very uncomfortable, so the two of us and Steve did a bit of a fade out and took our own little express tour through the palace, then went to the coffee shop. It was a real shame that the guide didn’t work out so well for us. The palace is stunning, every room is different, and it’s rammed full of art, but then again art and museums are not really my thing even on a good day.

Kat and me outside the Hermitage.

It was raining almost the whole time we were in St Petersburg. On the second day I decided I needed a sleep in, because we’d been on the go since we started the tour and after the overnight train I was totally wrecked. Most of the group went out to see the Peterhof fountains, and apparently Adrian got absolutely drenched in the rain, but I stayed in bed til 11am or so. Then I met Kat at the music museum, which was full of very helpful and very lovely Russian ladies who didn’t speak English. They tried very hard to tell us about everything in the museum. Lots of hand gestures. We wanted to pack them into our backpacks and take them on tour with us.


Then I went to see the woolly mammoth!!!!! It was the one thing I’d read about that I really, really wanted to do in St Petersburg. It was at the Zoological museum, which was much bigger than I’d expected somehow. It was pretty cool. It was about the only place in Russia that I saw any kids… which was the weirdest thing, there were just no kids anywhere. Not on the metros. Not in the streets. Not in the hotels. Apparently the population is declining in Russia, but there was a total, unexplainable absence of children pretty much anywhere.


The woolly mammoth was awesome!!!!!!!! He only has half a trunk and only a few patches of wool still left on his body. I think they dug him out of the ice in Siberia, I remember it being in the news at home when they found him. They had two or three babies as well, which had been found in different places. One of the babies was really fluffy and cute. I only had to push three or four kids out of the way to get my photos. Being 6ft tall has its advantages.

And the baby woolly mammoth!!!

Kat, Tony (the tour leader) and I had decided to go to the ballet in St Petersburg (again), and this time Tony organised the tickets and made sure it was Swan Lake we went to. The metro stops are quite far apart in St Petersburg, and we didn’t know where we were going, and so we had to wander round for ages finding the place. But we found it in the end. The ballet itself is beautiful, of course, but the dance company were not as good as the one we saw in Moscow. There were a few off-balance chorus ballerinas. We were sitting right down the front, by the orchestra, and Kat and I spent at least as much time watching the orchestra as the dancers. We spent a lot of time giggling. I even had one of the members of the orchestra trying to make me laugh towards the end of the ballet, when he had this really long sustained note to hold and he was running out of breath.


On our last day, we were leaving from the hotel to catch our bus to Estonia at midday, so by the time we rolled out of bed and wandered down to breakfast and took long showers and repacked our bags we didn’t have a lot of time to go and do much. But we were taking photos out of the window of our room, and there was a beautiful church a block away, which we hadn’t seen from street level. So we walked over there. Then we had pancakes with chocolate from a street vendor. Yummmmm.


And then to the bus and Estonia!!

McDonalds in Cyrillic.  Important stuff.  Phonetically it reads the same as in English.