Winter – I’m coming!

When I arrived at my hostel in Riga today, I was just in time for the free walking tour. As it turns out, there are even two different free walking tours around Riga, one at 11 and the other at 12. My tour was the „alternative“ one, which showed the places outside of the old town. Tomorrow, I will probably try out the other tour.

After the walking tour I met my friend Irēna who I met on the Russia trip. We had lunch together and she showed my some parts of the city. In the evening, I walked around the city again on my own. I thought that after a few days of traveling my legs got adjusted to walking all day, but now I’m still exhausted. Although it might be because I slept to short…

This time my daily report is a little delayed. Right now I’m already sitting on the bus to Riga. Yesterday was a rather quiet day. I spent most of the day walking around Tartu. I also visited the AHHAA Science Center, a science exhibition. Of course I didn’t learn that much new, but the exhibition was very nicely done and watching someone blow up hydrogen filled foam bubbles never gets old 😉

In the evening I had a very nice and cheap dinner in an old cafe. For western Europeans Estonia really offers great value! My hostel this time was completely different from the one before. It was quite small and more like a bed-and-breakfast. However, I met a lot of interesting people during my short stay. Unfortunately I had to get up at 6 today to catch my bus to Riga, so I am quite tired.

Today I traveled from Tallinn to Tartu. Tartu is Estonia’s second biggest city with almost 100.000 inhabitants and is an important university city. The bus trip by Lux Express was very nice, there was plenty of space in the bus and they had an entertainment system included. This way I spent the bus trip watching the movie „The Bucket List“ 😉

Tartu is a very nice city, after arriving I did a little walk around the city. However, it turned out to be quite challenging to find a place to have dinner on a Sunday evening. Most cafés and Restaurant which are recommended are closed on Sunday evening. In the end I ended up in a pub which is in an old gun powder storage. They say it is one of the highest pubs in the world.

Today, I went on another organised day tour to the eastern parts of Estonia. Technically speaking I’m still on this tour which is why I upload this post without any photos right now. I already made a selection of photos, but decided that 45 photos is too much to upload using a mobile internet connection. Because we will be back in Tallinn quite late and I will still join a pub crawl at my hostel I will probably only upload them tomorrow.

Eastern Estonia is under a strong Russian influence, a lot of the Russians who were relocated to Estonia during Soviet times live there and Russian is by far the most common language to hear in the streets. Some people say that it is an opportunity to visit Russia without getting a visa 😉

We visited a medieval fortress, a hydroelectric dam, a lot of Stalinist architecture, a ghost town, the border town of Narva and some other places.

Today I wanted to visit the Kadriorg park, the beach and Tallinn’s TV tower. Because the weather was very nice I decided to rent a bicycle to go there. The ugly concrete building is the Tallinn Linnahall. It was built during Soviet times for the 1980 Olympic games as a sports and concert hall and is no longer in use. There were plans to demolish it but so far it has been too expensive.

Today, I went on a day trip to Lahemaa, which is Estonia’s biggest natural park. The name means „land of bays“. It was almost a private tour, it was just the Dutch guide, his Estonian girlfriend, a Californian couple and me.

The park was very beautiful and the weather was great!

Today I took the ferry to Tallinn. On the sea it was extremely windy, I was surprised that they didn’t close the outer decks! Because of this the ship moved quite a lot, however I didn’t get seasick 😉

I have been to Tallinn before so I’m going to skip the standard city sightseeing. After checking in to my hostel and having late lunch/early dinner I went to the seaplane harbor. This is an impressive hangar which was built almost 100 years ago to house sea planes to protect St. Petersburg. Today, it is occupied by a maritime museum. Tomorrow, I will do a trip to Lahemaa which is Estonia’s biggest natural park.

On arrival to Helsinki yesterday I just bought something to eat and headed straight to my hostel to go to sleep. It was 9pm and I was exhausted by getting my things in Tampere in order. My hostel is nice, clean and quite central, but also expensive. 26€ is about twice of what I will pay in the cheapest hostel on my trip, but hey, that’s Helsinki.

Breakfast in the hostel was OK although not great and not included. I bought some yoghurt and a smoothie for the next morning. After breakfast I spent most of the day walking around the city. I have been to Helsinki before so it was mostly about visiting places again and enjoying the city. For lunch I went to a vegetarian cafe called Zucchini. That’s definitely a great and also cheap (for Helsinki) place to eat lunch.

In the afternoon I went to the cinema. I still had a voucher that I got for participating in a survey and wanted to use it while still in Finland. It was interesting to see that the movie had subtitles in Finnish AND Swedish. After that I had dinner in a very nice Finnish buffet restaurant (Konstan Möljä). Probably the last Finnish meal in some time…

Tomorrow I will take the ferry to Tallinn. I’m looking forward to my hostel there because I stayed there before and it’s a great place to meet people, more than the hostel in Helsinki which seemed a bit anonymous to me.

Here are some photos that I took during my trip. Unlike usually they are straight unedited from my camera because I’m only using my tablet right now. This will probably stay like this during my trip. Sorry that 3 of the pictures are turned, I will fix that large.

By the way, of course I don’t get money from advertising any places, I just want to provide a complete report 😉

Note: I wrote this article in January 2016, I am dating it back so it fits in order.

On the way back from Moscow to Finland we stopped again in St. Petersburg. After a nightly bus ride we arrived there in the early morning. After having breakfast in a Café we had a guided tour of the Yusupov Palace. This is one of the most luxurious houses in St. Petersburg and belonged to the Yusupov family. It is also the place where Grigori Rasputin was killed. In the afternoon we continued by bus back to Finland.