Five days & three countries later we're now at the end of our trip through these unfortunately situated Baltic states. First was Lithuania followed by Latvia then on to Estonia all of whom have the misfortune of having borders with Russia & are close enough to the Scandinavian countries for them to have been a threat in bygone times. So these small,(the largest of which has 2 million people) strategic places have at one time or other been ruled by the Swedish, Russians, Germans, then Russians again until they all finally gained their independence in the early 1990's, and they are all now fiercely proud of their heritage. All of their landscape is very similar & amazingly flat with only one hilly area amongst the three & I think the hills only rose to about 360m above sea level so hardly even a hill! Most of the land is covered in trees & lakes, with a few cultivated fields thrown in, and everywhere there are apple trees along the roadside all covered in fruit just seemingly growing wild. The houses all have well tended gardens & we've been treated to lovely fresh vegetables & fruit all along the way. Talking of food, we've had all our meals provided through these countries so that meant 3 x 3 course meals a day, I won't care if we don't eat again for some time, feeling very overweight!! All of countries are doing pretty well economically with huge tourist industries, they're all in the EU so roads are improving thank goodness as we've travelled over most of their main highways. Of the capital cities we've loved Riga the best (Latvia), lovely parks & market places, but Tallinn (Estonia) is in the Baltic coast & it was just so great for us NZ's to be close to the sea. It's a huge port with ferries from Finland & Sweden arriving regularly as well as cruise boats from all over. In Estonia the children learn English in school so it makes travelling for us tourists much easier, we certainly feel quite ignorant when most of the people we've met can speak a number of languages however I guess our need isn't the same as theirs. Education is free to tertiary level in the three countries & in Estonia women are paid their full salary for 18 months after giving birth & their jobs have to be kept for 3 years, not sure how they can afford it! Doctors visits are free but you have to wait 3 or 4 months for an appointment so those that can afford it have medical insurance so they are very lucky, they can get an appointment in about 2 or 3 weeks, makes our health system look pretty good doesn't it. Wifi is free throughout the country for residents & they're very proud of the fact that 2 students invented Skype to get around the difficulty they had with communications to the outside world during the communist era. So that's about it for that stage of the journey, we've just crossed the Russian border en route to St Petersburg so this will be another story. Having an amazing time, our love to you all xxx