This will be a long one, that’s right, the blog entry from my ten day vacation! We went from Moscow to St. Petersburg (30 minute wait), then a 5 hour bus to Helsinki, a short wait there, cruise to Stockholm, a day there, cruise back to Helsinki and stayed most of the day there, a ferry/cruise to Tallinn, a night there with the group, Long bus to Riga, a short day there, not with the group, long bus to Vilnius, not with the big group, then back to Riga, 8 hours there, and the 14 hour bus ride from Riga to Moscow. Holy… I’ve been having the time of my life!
The train to St. Petersburg sucked. There was a lady there and it sounded like she had diarrhea of the mouth. Seriously, her snoring kept me up ALL NIGHT LONG. I was pretty ornery the next day. The bus wasn’t much better; I slept until we got to the border. We stopped there for a bit, mostly to grab some breakfast. It was pretty good. The next stop was the Rock church, closed and not that impressive. The first day in Helsinki wasn’t all that impressive. It was dark and kind of dreary, but had the happy feel of St. Petersburg to it. We only spent about an hour there, and then headed to the ship to get to Stockholm!
A short bit on the cruise. The rooms weren’t bad, and it was a pretty nice ship. We wandered around, getting the feel of it, and something funny happened. I won’t say what, it wasn’t bad or anything, but it was funny. Anyhow, later that night was Karaoke. It was mostly older people there, Sarah and I did Walk, by Pantera, something that was not expected. We, you could say, slaughtered it. I’m really funny, but only if you get that reference. Oh, and another funny thing happened. It was nuts. Completely unexpected.
I’ve always wanted to go to Sweden. It’s been my dream forever! Right when we got off the boat I was impressed. It was clean, something I wasn’t used to at the time. Basically I love Stockholm. I want to live there as soon as possible. The people are nice! They all speak English and are willing to help the stupid tourists! I’m still in shock from how friendly everyone is, compared to Moscow. The group I went with started heading to find a used clothes or retro store, and that didn’t sound to appealing to me, so I headed back for the museum groups.
The only downside to Stockholm is that it is incredibly expensive! The museums were 20 bucks! So I dropped away from the big group and latched on to another one that was headed to a museum that was for free, supposedly. It was BEAUTIFUL in Stockholm! The trees were changing and everything was perfect! Thinking about being in Stockholm makes me happy! We walked past two monuments that told us the air quality, the water being purified and pumped back into the channel, and tons of other stuff. We got to the other museum and it was 20 bucks too, totally not fair. Whitney had a brochure for a free medieval museum, so we went to find that.
This museum was really cool. All sorts of Viking stuff and the really creepy dolls were really interesting. I got a cool shirt with the Stockholm seal on it. Stockholm at night was even more beautiful, there’s a really cool picture up that I took off a bridge. It got dark at 4 P.M. though, which was kind of sad, and that we went to hotel around 6, which was sad too. We were all pretty wiped out though, so only a little bit of a downer.
The next day I wandered around Stockholm with Ardo and Maddi for about five hours. It sounds lame, but it was really fun. We got to check out a bunch of really cool stores, and I got to buy a Swedish Death Metal album (Reroute to Remain by In Flames) From a Swedish metal store! I’m still so happy about it! One bad thing happened here. We were at a bookstore (I always go in them) and I looked into the back room and they were unpacking Towers of Midnight. There were CASES of them! And I couldn’t get one. It was a slap to the face. Everyone had to put up with me complaining about missing the midnight release. I almost felt bad for them.
After that passed we went back to the ship for more boring until that night. I was coerced into singing Hot’n’Cold by Katy Perry. I pretty much rocked it, and there’s a video of it if any of you are interested. After that most people headed back to bed. A few of us went and watched a guy sing and play guitar for a bit, then headed back to bed. This is where another interesting thing happened. A few of you know what it was, but most of you don’t. Maybe I’ll tell everyone someday. But it was fun.
Helsinki was interesting. Dani, Ardo, Sarah and I walked around it for a good time. It was fun. This was the part where the people not going to the Baltic’s had to head back, so we said good bye to Dani and started wandering again. I have successfully wandered in the two coolest cities ever. I’m proud. That day was particularly funny, because of inside jokes and whatnot. We were burned out and headed back to the ferry station to wait for our way across to Tallinn.
This boat ride was uneventful.
We made it to Tallinn around midnight, and had to walk to our hostel. It was in Old Town, which is a really cool place, but I’ll get to that later. We wandered aimlessly until I heard a drunken couple speaking in English and asked them where to go. Our hostel was called The Dancing Eesti, and if you ever need a hostel in Tallinn I highly recommend this place. I really like hostels. There’s a certain intimate feel to them, everyone is sociable and nice and there to have a good time. We got there safely and crashed.
The next day the owner of the hostel took us on a walking tour. Old town was awesome! I have a bunch of pictures with some good stories behind them; I’ll get to work uploading them and posting them ASAP. Denis was awesome, and from Australia, which was weird, but cool. Anyway Ardo, Sarah, Rosy and I wandered around taking strange photos for a competition we were having with some other girls. I climbed a wall, we found a pastry shop, it was great fun! Unfortunately this is where the groups split up. Every other person but those in our group left for Riga around 3, while we went to a medieval tower museum. I had excess energy so I ran up it twice. Then our bus came, and it was AWESOME! It had Wi-Fi and power outlets! I was sooo happy!
We got to Riga really late, and just went to our hostel, Friendly Fun Franks, which wasn’t really friendly or fun, and crashed. The next day we just wandered around Riga looking for magnets to buy. We don’t know why, but it’s two USD to one Lat, and that threw some people off. It wasn’t really all that exciting, nothing really overly awesome happened, so we ended up going back to the hostel and waiting for out time to leave on the bus. This bus sucked. No Wi-Fi, or power outlets. We got to Vilnius alright, and headed down to Jimmy Jump’s House. The directions were funny; they told us to wave the prostitutes that may be at one corner. They weren’t there, so we didn’t get to wave to them. This place is run by a really chill Canadian. It’s a really nice hostel, once again I recommend staying here if you are ever in Vilnius. All we did that day was go to the KGB museum, which was depressing and sad, and to the top of a hill overlooking Vilnius. After that we just went back to the hostel and watched movies and talked with the other vacationers.
The bus to Riga was nice. We had an 8 hour wait for our next bus, and had nothing to do. Everything was closed and boring. The highlight was me climbing on a horses face. I’ll get that video up sometime as well. We went to TGI Fridays, and then we ended up hanging out in McDonald’s for 3 hours. The bus ride back was 14 hours long! I’m still dying from it. It was like driving on a dirt road. I almost lost my glasses, but the guy in front of me had them.
That’s my vacation! If I think of anything else I’ll post it up in the next blog. Pictures http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=95855&id=1367655137&saved
