How did we end up choosing to come here anyway?

Well, work sent you an email to explain when you'd be on holiday this year. You had two fortnight breaks and a week in August. You were clear you wanted to spend two weeks in Croatia and you also suggested spending two weeks in a new part of Italy, following a memorable holiday last year in which we visited fifteen different places.

Anyway, we had the single week left to fill so I volunteered to do some detective work. I filled my spreadsheet with the requisite details and it became clear that we could travel to Lithuania on the Saturday from Luton and return to the same airport on the final Sunday from Riga. And the price was exceptionally cheap so I made the pitch to you.

And I'd always wanted to visit the Baltics ...

And so the decision seemed easy. I knuckled down and confirmed that it was possible to travel not only from Vilnius to Riga, but also head further north to Tallinn. That would make three countries during the holiday.

But not travelling by train.

Well, no. They do have trains here but not between the countries. It's more common to travel by coach here. Anyway, the timetables showed that we could easily do a couple of days in each of Vilnius, Riga and Tallinn, before heading home. Piece of cake.

Except for the languages.

Except for the languages.

Do you want to tell people why we'll not be using foreign languages on this holiday?

Um ... OK. We'll be visiting the three Baltic states, each of which has its own language ... and each of which is completely unrelated not only to the others but to any other languages we know.

We might be able to learn some basic words but there's no way we'll be able to remember word lists for each of three countries using totally new words. We'll cope by learning the basics when travelling from A to B and using our other languages when we land in difficulty.

So, we'll do two days in each of the cities. That sounds quite relaxed by our standards, even if not to others!

Yup. This is our experimental week. We'll stick to the main cities and get a feel for the countries. If we like them, we could come back another time and think about travelling about. We'll soon know!

I spent the week prior to this holiday looking into the blank faces of people at work when I told them I was flying to Vilnius on Saturday. They could be divided into roughly two camps; those who immediately exclaimed "Where?", quickly followed by "What would you want to go there for?!" when I explained that it was in Lithuania, and those who smiled politely and said "Oh that will be lovely", before sitting down at their computers to Google it. I started to get a little apprehensive about the holiday myself when I refreshed my memory of the map and realised that Vilnius was actually pretty close to Poland, the only country I've visited that I would never go to again. The weather forecast suggested that the Baltic would be cold and rainy, while the guidebook implied that there would be nothing to eat except potatoes and fatty pork, neither of which circumstances seemed conducive to a particularly enjoyable week away. Nevertheless, this was our shortest holiday and an opportunity to have adventures exploring three new countries.

We flew out with Wizzair from Luton, an overall more enjoyable experience than travelling with Ryanair. We weren't made to pay for the cheap price of the ticket by listening to prerecorded announcements about buying scratchcards to help sick children, the baggage allowance was an impressive 32kg and the in-flight magazine was the most amusing such publication I have ever seen, featuring a plethora of advertisements for IVF in Poland, dental work in Hungary and plastic surgery in Romania. I did manage to confuse myself slightly the previous week when I noticed that what I had assumed would be a two-hour flight left the UK at 07.30 and didn't arrive in Lithuania until 12.10, but it transpired that this phenomenon could be explained not by a lesser-known Bermuda triangle having opened up over the Baltic, but rather by all three countries being two hours ahead of GMT.

Our first impression upon landing in Vilnius was that it was small. Our plane was almost the only one on the tarmac and it didn't look like the airport was expecting another aircraft all day. Helpful signs with pictures of trains on led from the terminal building towards what the guidebook had described as a railway station, but when we arrived there we found a single train track with a platform the length of one carriage. There were a handful of other people waiting, which reassured us that we were in the right place, and sure enough when our train did arrive it really was just one carriage, presumably making the ten-minute journey between the airport and the main train station multiple times a day.

We were staying in the Hotel Telecom Guest, a somewhat strangely named establishment which nevertheless turned out to be very pleasant and conveniently located, being just a 15-minute walk from both the train station and the Old Town. We settled into our room, had a brief nap in an attempt to recover from getting up at 3am, and spent the evening wandering around the city centre and getting a feel for the place. We were lucky that not only was it unexpectedly sunny but we quickly found an outside restaurant serving pizza and cheap wine. Potatoes and pork fat were postponed for another day!

Due to a slight malfunction with setting the alarm, we slept for the best part of 12 hours and so it was after 10am before we headed out for a proper exploration of Vilnius the following morning. As we left the hotel and began to walk downhill towards the town centre, we had an enticing view of domed churches set against a backdrop of densely forested hills.

The hotel had helpfully provided us with a town plan, but we soon realised that the centre was compact enough for us to stroll aimlessly without running the risk of getting hopelessly lost, so we wandered wherever the fancy took us, turning down side streets whenever we spied a particularly attractive building. The most striking thing about the centre of Vilnius was probably the sheer volume of churches (both Catholic and Orthodox) and how uniquely decorated each one was.

We soon came to the main square, which was home to an impressively large cathedral, complete with tower.

Behind the cathedral, a cobbled stone pathway led uphill towards Gediminas Tower.

The stones were incredibly uneven in places and walking required a lot of concentration on feet to avoid tripping over! Having made it to the top, we climbed some even steeper staircases within the tower itself and emerged out onto the ramparts to be rewarded with a magnificent view out across Vilnius.

One of the sights which caught our attention were three white crosses standing atop of one the wooded hills to our left. We had read in the guidebook how these crosses had been a landmark of the city until the Russians had bulldozed them in 1950. The crosses had been rebuilt since the end of Soviet times, although the demolished remains of the old monument were still visible. It was a fascinating story and looked like it ought to be a pleasant walk from where we were, across the river and through a nicely shaded forest towards the crosses, so off we went. What I hadn't bargained for was quite how high the hill was going to be and how steep the pathway was...

Following a sandy track through the forest, we came to a series of wooden staircases built into the side of the hill. They were reasonably sturdy, with only a handful of places where the steps had broken, but there was no handrail and very few landings where you could pause and catch your breath. The layout was slightly deceptive so that when you arrived panting at what appeared to be almost the top, the staircase turned a corner and revealed at least as many steps yet to go. My tactic on the way up was to keep walking and not look down, the thinking being that hyperventilation was preferable to vertigo. We made it in the end and got our first glimpse of the broken crosses lying on the hillside.

From there another staircase led relentlessly upwards towards the restored monument.The crosses were absolutely enormous, which I suppose makes sense given that we had been able to make them out from such a long distance away, and it was so sunny that it was difficult to look up at them without being blinded. Having successfully avoided being trampled by a party of Russian schoolchildren (who appeared to have arrived via a much easier tarmac path!) and spent some time admiring yet another beautiful view across Vilnius, it was time to climb back down again.

This was where the trouble began! What had just been arduous on the way up became absolutely terrifying on the way down, when we were faced with a staircase stretching downwards as far as the eye could see. It was difficult to do justice to its magnitude in a photograph because it was far too long for more than a fraction of it to fit in one photo. I don't know how many steps there were, but our pedometers later gave us credit for climbing 56 normal-sized staircases, so there were certainly several hundred. I managed to make it down about 15 of them in an upright position before vertigo took over and I inched down the next hundred or so on my bottom.

We made it in the end and enjoyed a much more pleasant stroll along by the side of the river (where we encountered some Lithuanian ducks!) and back into the town centre. In need of some sustenance, we found a nice Italian restaurant and took advantage of Lithuanian prices to enjoy two tagliatelle bologneses, a glass of wine, two beers and a bottle of water for an unbelievable £14

We were staying only two nights in Vilnius, mainly due to the guidebook implying that it was the smallest of the Baltic capitals, but it was so pleasant there that we could easily have stayed longer. We certainly could have afforded to stay longer, as I had significantly overbudgeted with £40 of Litas per day, and despite eating out twice on Sunday and sitting drinking in an outdoor cafe until twilight, we still had some of the day's allocation left for Monday. We weren't leaving on a bus to Riga until 14.15 and so I had cautiously budgeted an additional £40 of Litas for Monday morning, to make sure that we had enough money for a filling lunch before setting out on our travels. Oh dear! With more Litas left than we knew what to do with, the best solution we could think of was to blow some on an open-top bus tour of the city centre.

We picked up a leaflet for the bus tours from our hotel. There was one scheduled to depart from the cathedral square at 10am, so we had plenty of time for a leisurely breakfast and another stroll around the old town. The bus was one of those ones with audio guides that you listen to through a headset. The driver kindly set ours to English for us, but it proved to be a little difficult to understand. Firstly, because the Lithuanian accent of the narrator was quite strong and in places what was being said didn't appear to entirely make sense. Secondly, because the maximum volume that the headphones were able to operate at was hardly audible above the noise of the rest of the traffic on the road. Thirdly, because there was something wrong with the headphone socket at my seat so that I was only able to get the audio at all if I physically held the headphones in place with one hand, while desperately clinging on to the handle of my seat with the other as we bumped and bounced around the cobbled streets of Vilnius.

The first part of the tour wasn't very exciting as it mainly took in the churches and other monuments in the town centre which we had already seen. The second half became more interesting though as we drove further out of town and along by the river. The commentary gave some worthwhile insights into the history of the town, and it was particularly interesting when the old KGB building was pointed out.

After lunch we headed to the bus station to await our coach to Riga. I was somewhat nervous upon entering the bus station and observing vehicles reminiscent of the buses in Kiev (not a compliment!). Thankfully, when our bus arrived it was extremely modern and comfortable and the roads (on the Lithuanian side of the border at least) were so smooth that I was able to read on a bus for probably the first time in my life. The journey to Riga took four hours, crossing into Latvia with about an hour to go. Once we had left the outskirts of Vilnius behind, the countryside became extremely flat. We drove through mile upon mile of forest, passing very few towns or villages until we were virtually on the outskirts of Riga. The main excitements of the journey were when the bus driver became so frustrated with a slow Estonian van in front of us (which was refusing to let him overtake) that he whipped out his iPhone and took a photo of its registration plate. And when we had a document check after the Latvian border by a slightly scary policeman who stared at our passports for what felt like a very long time before deciding that they were okay!

We disembarked from the bus in Riga into a swirl of noise and people. It felt like a different universe from quiet and peaceful Vilnius and we were initially disorientated, struggling to work out exactly where we were on the map and which direction we needed to go in to locate our hotel. We found it eventually, on a quieter side street a few kilometres outside the town centre. Happily the staff spoke English and we were able to check in without any difficulties. There was even room service, which we were able to take advantage of to obtain a couple of drinks and a pizza without having to venture out into the metropolis.

Room service also provided Tim with the most awful sandwich that he'd ever faced; thick slabs of tomato gunked in mayo. On the back of the tomato he found slight traces of fish... he'd ordered a tuna sandwich and hates tomato. YUCK!

We were up early the next morning, eager to see what a Latvian breakfast buffet had in store. It was a distinct improvement on the Lithuanian breakfast buffet, which (once the gherkins, salad and anything pickled had been discounted) consisted mainly of toast. There were a few oddities here too, including something which looked suspiciously like cabbage, but there was also a big container of scrambled eggs and - even better - an enormous pile of pancakes.

By 9am we were suitably stuffed and out exploring Riga. First impressions were that it was big. The roads were big, the buildings were big and the river was big. The pavements weren't too busy but the streets were home to a confused mayhem of trams, trolley buses and random vehicles which looked like they should have been scrapped twenty years ago. Crossing the road was an interesting experience! Once we got away from the vicinity of the bus and train stations, however, things calmed down a bit and the centre of the old town was, happily, traffic-free. 

The first significant sight which we came across was the Freedom Monument, Latvia's own mini-version of the Statue of Liberty. It was erected in 1935 as a celebration of Latvian independence and although the bottom part of it was unfortunately undergoing restoration, we were still able to crane our necks and appreciate its scale.

From there we wandered into a beautiful park, following the bank of a canal which used to form part of Riga's moat in olden days. Lots of trees, ducks and pretty flowers! We then moved inwards into the centre of the old town and encountered a whole host of beautiful buildings including this gigantic cathedral, apparently the biggest church in the Baltics.

Another particularly striking building was the so-called House of the Blackheads, constructed in the 14th century as a guild for unmarried German merchants in Riga. They must have had pretty high opinions of themselves as the facade is extremely ornate, covered in different sculptures and paintings. The original building was damaged by German bombing during the Second World War and the remains demolished by the Soviets afterwards, but post-independence the Latvians began to reconstruct it and it was completed in 2001. It's been done extremely well because we had no idea that it wasn't the original when we were looking at it, realising only after reading about it in the guidebook!

The photos below show some of the other lovely buildings that we saw

With an extra day to spend in Latvia and a pile of unspent Lats now adding to the Litas already burning a hole in our pockets, we decided to head off the beaten track and visit the Latvian seaside. It was news to me that Latvia had a seaside; while it does logically follow from the fact that it has a coastline, I've never seen adverts for breaks on the Latvian Riviera advertised in the local travel agents. Apparently it has always been very popular with Russians though, and the guidebook recommended a small resort called Majori as an easy day-trip from Riga, so we decided to give it a try.

We managed to work out from the Internet that there were two trains per hour from Riga to Majori. The train station was only a short walk away from our hotel, so catching a train would have been a simple task, if Riga station hadn't been a warren of tunnels lined with plenty of shops and cafes, but no visible ticket office. We did eventually locate the correct general area for ticket-buying and, after initially standing in the wrong queue, managed to acquire a ticket to Majori for the bargain price of 1 Lat each.

After ten minutes on the train, I came to the conclusion that I would rather have paid 10 Lats and had some personal space! The train was already fully when we boarded it, so we found a convenient place to stand in the vestibule area. It was a little difficult to balance upright as the train was exceedingly bumpy and prone to jolting in unexpected directions, but we were confident that we could put up with it for the brief 30-minute journey. We hadn't taken into consideration the fact that the train was due to stop at approximately eight other stations on the way from Riga to Majori and that at each one there would be a crowd of people on the platform wanting to join the train.

Everything was okay for the first few stops as people piled into the interior of the carriage. That was soon full, however, and so people began to cram into the vestibule with us. It was breathtaking to see how the (already full) train would pull into a station and an army of old ladies with beach towels would somehow manoeuvre themselves into spaces which shouldn't logically have existed. By the end of the journey we were crammed into the vestibule like sardines and it was with no small amount of relief that we arrived at our destination.

The first thing we noticed about Majori was not the sea, but the forests. The town seemed to be built on the edge of some beautiful woods and, as we progressed further into the centre, it became clear that the majority of houses were built out of wood. The wood was mostly painted, however, so they didn't look anything like chalets, and we saw some rather ambitious constructions such as this one:

We followed helpful signposts to the beach, which led us down the town's main street before branching off towards the sea. The main street was in some ways a typical seaside road, flanked by stalls selling fridge magnets, postcards and icecreams, but the variety of restaurants was rather exotic. Rather than rows of fish and chip shops interspersed with burger bars and hotdog vans, Majori boasted an Armenian restaurant, an Uzbekh restaurant and several Russian restaurants. We stopped for a drink at an outdoor cafe and were served in Russian, which was a slightly unusual experience.

It felt like we had been walking towards the beach for quite some time by this stage but we still hadn't had so much as a glimpse of the sea. I was starting to get slightly concerned and hoping it wouldn't turn out to be like our infamous trip to Narbonne Plage (where we walked about 20km in search of the Mediterranean!) when all of a sudden the Baltic appeared over the top of a hill.

The beach completely surpassed our expectations of how attractive it was going to be. The sea was a beautiful shade of blue, while the sand was some of the finest, whitest sand I have ever seen, completely devoid of rocks, pebbles or other sharp objects. Best of all, there was hardly any seaweed The part of the beach nearest the town was pretty busy, although it was helpfully divided into an area for "active recreation" (yellow sign) and an area for "passive recreation" (green sign).

We walked in the direction of passive recreation, which mainly seemed to involve people sunbathing, reading, and eating Russian kebabs. Within five or ten minutes we had left the mass of people behind us and found a quieter stretch where we were able to enjoy the lovely sand in peace.

We indulged in a spot of paddling, dipping our toes in the Baltic for the very first time. It felt cold at first, but surprisingly warm after you had been in for a couple of minutes.

Paddling also gave us a lovely view of how the forest was stretching down almost to the edge of the beach.

We later ventured up through the forested sand-dunes and found ourselves in a place called Dubulti, which was the next station down from Majori and the terminous for most of the local trains. Spotting an opportunity to outwit the horde of other travellers who had got off the train in Majori, we resolved to come back here after lunch and guarantee ourselves a seat for the journey back. The town itself seemed pretty with an interesting church and a statue which appeared to be St George killing a dragon.

Our plot was ultimately successful, as after an enormous pizza for lunch in Majori, we found ourselves sitting happily on an almost empty train in Dubulti. The guidebook may have been right when it said that Latvia had the worst trains in Europe, but they are certainly a lot more comfortable when you get a seat

After two relaxing days in Latvia, it was time to move on to what was scheduled to be our third and final country: Estonia. The journey from Riga to Tallinn took about four and a half hours but it didn't feel anywhere near that long, as we had the good fortune to be travelling on one of the world's most comfortable buses. We had booked tickets with a company called Luxexpress and although, with the benefit of hindsight, I probably should have noticed that the company name included the word "lux", I really wasn't expecting anything special given that we had only paid €16 each. We were therefore amazed to find that we had extremely comfortable seats, more leg-room than we knew what to do with (there were so much space, our legs weren't actually long enough to reach the footrests!) and free wi-fi. The comfort was surpassed only by the Luxexpress bus on which we travelled back to Riga on Sunday morning, which had seats so soft they actually felt like beds. Tim began mentally planning future holidays which would involve spending the maximum possible time upon Luxexpress buses!

We arrived in Tallinn around 13.30 and began navigating our way towards the hotel. When booking hotels in new places, I normally aim to find somewhere within 1.5km of the bus/train station we will be arriving at, so as to minimise the dragging of cases, but in Tallinn this hadn't proved possible and we had about 2.5km to walk. This wouldn't necessarily have been a problem, had it not been for the fact that my suitcase was broken. If you have been reading the blog assidiuously, you may recall that Italy killed my suitcase. After the nightmare of dragging it around Abruzzo without functioning wheels, one of the first things I did when I got back to the UK was to order a new one. Tim and I did quite a bit of suitcase research on Amazon, and I eventually opted for a big hard case made by a German manufacturer. The wheels looked sturdy, as far as we could tell from the Internet, and the fact that it was German-made gave me hope that it would be good quality. I was extremely disappointed, therefore, to find that one of the main wheels broke during its first outing in Vilnius. The wheel had buckled somehow, which made pulling it rather difficult, and by the time we got to Riga the unexpected friction as I dragged it along was causing bits of wheel to melt and fall off. By Tallinn, the wheel had ceased to function in any meaningful way and we were left wishing that we had brought Tim's indestructible (Ukrainian!) suitcase instead.

Anyway, we progressed slowly towards our hotel and we were more or less coping until we reached the narrow streets of the Old Town. The Old Town in Tallinn is truly beautiful but on that first day we were in no condition to admire it as we alternately pushed and pulled the wretched case along cobblestones, up and down huge stone kerbs, in and out of random holes in the pavement... Adding to the trauma were the facts that it was over 30 degrees, the town centre was full of tourists so it was impossible to walk in a straight line and the Google map I had printed was far from sufficient to correctly decipher the rabbit warren of streets. A lack of street signs meant that we completely missed the final turning for our hotel, accidentally walking out of the city walls, and ultimately it was gone 14.30 by the time a pair of very hot and bothered travellers arrived at the Olevi Residents Hotel. We were looking forward to checking into our room, turning on the air con and doing some serious cooling down.

Unfortunately, things didn't exactly work out like that.

We checked in at the hotel reception and they explained that a porter would show us to our room. He was a nice enough chap, though his command of English was only slightly superior to our command of Russian. He led us out of the reception, down an extremely tight spiral staircase, through what appeared to be part of a restaurant kitchen, along a corridor, down some more steps and eventually stopped outside Room 18. We opened the door and were hit with a blast of heat. There was a large fan on the far side of the room, which the porter obligingly went to turn on for us. It whirred briefly, before deciding that that was too much like hard work and cutting out. Oh dear. We would have opened a window to cool down... except there wasn't one. It appeared that we had been given a room in the basement and there was no natural light at all. Tim suggested that the porter might like to go and get us another fan. He returned a few minutes later with a tiny device which seemed designed for blowing out warm air rather than cool and if it made any impact on the temperature of the room, it probably made it hotter.

We stuck it out for a few hours before heading out to explore Tallinn and grab some food. When we returned to the hotel room later in the evening, it was like a sauna. There was no way we could have slept in there, so Tim headed off to reception to complain. The hotel seemed pretty full so I wasn't sure he'd have any luck but his impressive negotiating skills (=telling the staff that the room was "dangerously hot") had the desired effect and he soon returned with the keys to room 62.

Room 62 was on the sixth floor and the hotel didn't have a lift. Reaching it was rather a struggle but it was worth it when we did to achieve the luxury of a window. There was still no air conditiong or fan, but opening the window cooled the room down to a reasonable temperature and it was a massive improvement on being stuck in airless basement!

Accommodation problems suitably resolved, on Friday we were ready to start exploring Tallinn in earnest. What a beautiful city! Almost every street that we walked down was photo-worthy and so it is difficult to know where to start when describing it.

We deliberately made an early start with our sightseeing, because we knew there was a risk that the Old Town would be swamped by visitors from cruise ships during the middle of the day. By the time the coach-loads of them arrived at 10am, we had already enjoyed the best of the sights in peace and quiet. The one good thing about our hotel was its central location and so we were able to wander straight out into the main square, which is dominated by the enormous town hall building.

From there we found our way to the East Gate, where we saw the first of countless fantastic towers built into the old city walls.

The towers weren't the only noteworthy sights, though. Among our other favourites were this amazing Russian Orthodox cathedral:

As well as the Estonian Independence monument:

Having seen the main sights of the Old Town during the morning, we had a cunning plan to avoid the hordes of tourists in the afternoon by heading out to Kadriorg park. Kadriorg, which means "Catherine's Valley" in Estonian, is a suburb of Tallinn which is dominated by an enormous park, originally commissioned by the Russian Tsar, Peter the Great, and named after his wife.  As the park is a few kilometres' walk outside of the town centre, we gambled that most other tourists wouldn't find their way there... and happily we were right.

After a lovely stroll around the park grounds, which house the palace of the Estonian President and a cottage which Peter the Great lived in while the park was being developed, we unexpectedly found ourselves at the seaside.

The heavens opened not long afterwards and sheltering under a somewhat inadequate trellis, we watched the ships cruising in and out of Tallinn harbour. That seemed to plant the seed of an idea in Tim's mind and as we embarked on the long walk back into Tallinn (we walked over 15 miles in total that day!) he said, "Why don't we go to Helsinki tomorrow?".

Erm, maybe because Helsinki is kinda, like, in Finland?!

Actually, it turns out that Helsinki isn't very far away from Tallinn at all. A bit of research on the Internet that evening revealed that a company called Tallink runs regular ferries which travel from one capital to the other within two hours. Initially the prices looked expensive, but by going out and returning on the same day we became eligible for a special day-cruise discount so that the final fare was only €30 each. It seemed like too good a chance to miss out on, so we booked our tickets and went to bed extremely excited by the prospect of visiting country number FOUR!

The final day of our holiday was one of the most exciting as we set off on a spontaneous trip to Helsinki. I was slightly apprehensive about how we might fare without a map, a guidebook or a single word of Finnish, but it was definitely going to be an adventure if nothing else!

Our ferry was due to leave Tallinn at 10.30 and arrive in the Finnish capital at 12.30. The instructions on our ticket implied that it was advisable to be at the ferry terminal an hour before the boat departed, to make sure that there was enough time for check-in and boarding, and we weren't completely sure how long it would take us to walk to the terminal from our hotel, so our intention was to have breakfast in the hotel as soon as it opened at 8am. We arrived at the breakfast room at 07.59 only to find it completely full of what appeared to be a tour party. Every single table was taken (in what wasn't a very large room to start with) and it was clear that we didn't stand much chance of getting a seat within the next 20 minutes. How annoying! We ended up adding Estonia to the list of Eastern European countries in which our lives have been saved by McDonalds and having breakfast there en route to the ferry.

The journey to Helsinki was extremely pleasant. It was a big ferry and although there was a large crowd of people waiting to board it, we managed to get find seats by a window with a great view. As the boat pulled out of Tallinn, we were able to see some of the landmarks along the coast which we had visited during our trip to Kadriorg the previous day. We passed some small islands off the coast of Estonia and then there was nothing but miles and miles of blue sea. The Baltic was beautifully calm and so we really enjoyed our trip.

We arrived at Helsinki's western ferry terminal, which is a bit outside of the city centre. There was a helpful display of local leaflets in the terminal building, and we picked up a brochure for an open-top bus tour, thinking that this would be the ideal way to get an introduction to new city which we knew very little about... until we saw that the tickets were priced at €25!!! Wow, what we've heard about Scandinavia being an expensive place must really be true then. We were fortunate, however, that the leaflet for the bus tour featured a useful map of all the main sites and the route the bus would take between them. We decided to save some money by travelling along the route by foot and seeing what we could see.

There was some sort of tram between the ferry terminal and the main part of the town but there was such a horde of people waiting at the stop that we decided to give it a miss and walk in instead. The route was well-signposted and we were rewarded with some nice sea views as we made our way around the coast and into the town. Soon we were on what appeared to be Helsinki's main street and were able to get a proper town plan from Tourist Information. So far, so good.

Our main aim at this point was to find some lunch, but the main street didn't seem the best place to do so because we assumed the prices would be a lot higher than elsewhere. We struck off down some side streets and somehow managed to walk for an hour along a route which missed every single eating establishment in Helsinki. We did find some beautiful cathedrals though

The impressive white church above is the Lutheran cathedral, the main symbol of Helsinki. It was built in the nineteenth century as a tribute to Tsar Nicholas I of Russia and known as St Nicholas' Church until Finland became independent of Russia in 1917. The equally striking red church below is the Finnish Orthodox cathedral, built on top of a rock on the eastern side of Helsinki. The largest Orthodox church in Western Europe, it was originally a Russian Orthodox church and a symbol of Russia's domination over Finland.

Just around the corner from the Orthodox cathedral we finally chanced upon a restaurant - yay! Even better, there was an English version of the menu and amongst all the slightly unusual fish dishes which I guess are normal in this part of the world, we found a regular burger and chips meal. Excellent... except for the price! Tim's face was a picture when he realised that beefburger and chips was going to set us back €17 - each. Wow. Luckily there was a jug of free tap water on the table, so we were able to save some money by not buying anything to drink. The meal was nice when it came, but it felt like incredibly poor value compared to Vilnius, where we had had two main courses, half a litre of wine and two beers for the grand sum of €14 earlier in the week. Finland is definitely the most expensive place I have ever been.

Lunch over, we had four hours left until our return ferry so we set off to see as much of the city as possible. Dodging occasional showers, we strolled around the main sights in the city centre which included an imposing railway station, a pretty blue town hall and numerous tree-lined squares. This rather grim-looking building turned out to be the Finnish parliament.

Not far from the parliament building was the start of a beautiful park, where we were able to walk alongside the shore of a lake with great views back towards the town centre and the cathedrals. We found Helsinki's Olympic stadium, as well as the Botanical Gardens, and then proceeded to get rather lost looking for the Sibelius monument, a sculpture dedicated to the famous Finnish composer. Despite being one of the key sights in Helsinki, it didn't appear to be signposted at all and we are indebted to two separate locals who saw us looking confusedly at a map and gave us directions.

The monument is hidden away in another beautiful park and our route back towards the ferry terminal took us past some gorgeous stretches of coastline. At times it was hard to believe that we were in the middle of a capital city.

Having somehow walked another 15 miles, the ferry back to Tallinn was a welcome excuse to sit down for two hours. It was slightly rowdier than on the way out, filled with Finns evidently looking forward to a cheap night out in Estonia. I don't blame them; if I lived in Helsinki I think I'd sail to Tallinn every time I felt like burger and chips! If you're ever looking to do a similar trip, it's worth noting that although there are multiple ferry companies which sail between Tallinn and Helsinki, several of them have timetables which are only geared to doing a daytrip from Helsinki to Tallinn (rather than the other way round). Our brief research indicated that Tallink was the best company to use in the less popular direction, and it certainly worked out cheaply for us. 

It was after 10pm by the time we got back to our hotel - a late night considering that we had to be up at 04.30 to catch our bus to Riga airport - but it had been worth it. We were rewarded by this wonderful view of the sun setting over Tallinn; a perfect end to a perfect holiday.