Email from the Baltic States
Hi everyone
We are now in Turku, on the west coast of Finland and the original capital of Finland. I have just had my second dinner of baked reindeer and roast veggies followed by icecream and lignonberry sauce. Washed down with Lapin Kulta beer of course.
The Baltic states were well worth the visit and we loved the people and the food! The flight from St Petersburg to Tallin, the capital of Estonia, with Estonian airlines was very good although St Petersburg airport was a total shamozzle. It seemed to be a very small airport and there were at least two different flights going from each gate so it was incredibly crowded.
Tallin was just like you said, Cathy. The Old Town with its tiny narrow cobblestoned streets lined with pastel coloured houses is just gorgeous. It was warm and sunny and perfect for exploring. There were a lot of cruise ships in the harbour and so it was very crowded, especially in the Town Square where many of the restaurants are. We found a little ale-house, like a little cellar really, where we had some Elk soup for €1 a bowl. Very tasty. We climbed up the tower in St Olav's Cathedral for a magnificent view of Tallin - 258 steps! From the top, I managed to spot my favourite department store, Stockmanns, just outside the city walls! This is Finnish, very much like David Jones in Sydney, but I wasn't expecting to see one here. I dragged Colin in but once he discovered their deli and supermarket downstairs full of Fazer chocolate and Lapin Kulta beer, it was harder to get him out! We were about 3km from our hotel but Colin carried carried a 6pack of 500mL cans back to the hotel @AUS$1:05 per can and I lugged a considerable weight of chocolate back! We needed something to nibble on as we travelled around and dark chocolate is healthy!
From Estonia, we travelled south to Riga, the capital of Latvia. Our hotel was just across the road from the river and we had the prettiest of walks along its banks into the Old Town. Colin found a wonderfully informative book in our room called Riga In Your Pocket and spent a considerable amount of time reading it. Under the heading "Drugs", after saying it was illegal to have any, the info continued..."If you buy pot off a stranger in Riga there's a good chance you'll get a bag of oregano or locally grown hemp that has a THC level barely above zero and would give you about the same buzz as you'd get from smoking dried parsley. You can purchase hemp butter at the Central Market legally, but it's just something to spread on toast and definitely won't get you high." The section on scams in the same booklet... "Be wary of young attractive girls in Livu Square asking you to join them at a nearby bar. You'll be shocked to discoverr later that the barely palatable bottle of wine that you bought them costs 500 Lts or more (AUS$900)!!! If you refuse the bouncers will pummel you until you give them your PIN code." Needless to say, Colin had Vegemite on his toast and a very nice drinking companion on his arm - me!! 
Further south and we were in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, which has another very quaint yet different Old Town. There was a festival happening the weekend we were there. There were street concerts going on all around the city. There were small choirs, bigger choirs, groups of dancers, many in national costume. There was singing and dancing all around us and the array of colours was amazing. Our hotel was just around the corner from the Presidential Palace where a concert was to be held that night. Chairs had been set up in preparation and a dress rehearsal was underway. We sat down with a drink and an icecream and spent the afternoon enjoying the performance. There was a full orchestra accompanying the opera singers and it was so different seeing them perform in jeans and casual clothes instead of evening dress. The sound engineers were having fun trying to perfect the microphones and accoustics so there were quite a few encores! The music and singing was wonderful. Later we walked to the top of the tower in the castle which has a display of photos from the second world war through the Communist era. There are amazing photos of the day in 1989 when 2 million people, Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians, joined hands to form a human chain stretching the 650km between Vilnius and Tallin to protest the 50th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Hitler and Stalin when they carved up Europe. Two years later the Soviet Union had collapsed and in 1992 all the Baltic countries were independent again. 
Our week in the Baltic countries has just flown by but we'll never forget the warmth of the people we met, the history we learnt and the memories of those medieval Old Towns.
From Estonia, we travelled south to Riga, the capital of Latvia. Our hotel was just across the road from the river and we had the prettiest of walks along its banks into the Old Town. Colin found a wonderfully informative book in our room called Riga In Your Pocket and spent a considerable amount of time reading it. Under the heading "Drugs", after saying it was illegal to have any, the info continued..."If you buy pot off a stranger in Riga there's a good chance you'll get a bag of oregano or locally grown hemp that has a THC level barely above zero and would give you about the same buzz as you'd get from smoking dried parsley. You can purchase hemp butter at the Central Market legally, but it's just something to spread on toast and definitely won't get you high." The section on scams in the same booklet... "Be wary of young attractive girls in Livu Square asking you to join them at a nearby bar. You'll be shocked to discoverr later that the barely palatable bottle of wine that you bought them costs 500 Lts or more (AUS$900)!!! If you refuse the bouncers will pummel you until you give them your PIN code." Needless to say, Colin had Vegemite on his toast and a very nice drinking companion on his arm - me!! 
Further south and we were in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, which has another very quaint yet different Old Town. There was a festival happening the weekend we were there. There were street concerts going on all around the city. There were small choirs, bigger choirs, groups of dancers, many in national costume. There was singing and dancing all around us and the array of colours was amazing. Our hotel was just around the corner from the Presidential Palace where a concert was to be held that night. Chairs had been set up in preparation and a dress rehearsal was underway. We sat down with a drink and an icecream and spent the afternoon enjoying the performance. There was a full orchestra accompanying the opera singers and it was so different seeing them perform in jeans and casual clothes instead of evening dress. The sound engineers were having fun trying to perfect the microphones and accoustics so there were quite a few encores! The music and singing was wonderful. Later we walked to the top of the tower in the castle which has a display of photos from the second world war through the Communist era. There are amazing photos of the day in 1989 when 2 million people, Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians, joined hands to form a human chain stretching the 650km between Vilnius and Tallin to protest the 50th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Hitler and Stalin when they carved up Europe. Two years later the Soviet Union had collapsed and in 1992 all the Baltic countries were independent again. 
Our week in the Baltic countries has just flown by but we'll never forget the warmth of the people we met, the history we learnt and the memories of those medieval Old Towns.