Well we are back on our own and may actually be suffering slight withdrawals from the group. What do you mean we have to find our own way to the bus station?!? Plus we've lost our third wheel, shopping buddy in Kate. Being I've gone through the Baltics before, Emmett has picked our destinations. We spent a little more time in Tallinn, moved onto the spa town of Parnu and are now in Riga, Estonia for a few days. I'm actually being a bit of a crap tourist at ...

We had an early morning start for the Svartisen glacier and it looked like our weather luck had changed. Up to this point we had been unbelievably lucky with blue sky and sun. This was now replaced by drizzle and fog. Due to very early morning grumpiness I questioned the point of climbing up a mountain in this weather but went along anyway. Lucky I did as by the time we had driven and ferried, the fog had lifted. Then came the "walk" as described by our lead...

They say first impressions last, after meeting the tour group both Emmett and I wanted to run the other way very quickly. The bus was full of young, giggling girls. My favourite type. Being they had started the tour 8 days earlier in Berlin, packs had been formed and we were not sure we'd fit in and if we actually wanted too. Felt a little like being back in high school and I didn't particularly like that the first time around. Half way through turns out we...

I love Europe. We got off the train in Helsinki and there was an actual tourist information centre. They spoke English and were helpful, two thing we have happily been reacquainting ourselves with in Scandinavia. I will never take friendly people for granted again. Probably. Helsinki is a cool city full of cool people. It well may be Europe's centre for tattoos, piercings and death defying haircuts. Being museumed/churched out we mostly walked around enjoyi...

Well we made it to St Petersburg, but almost killed a Russian in the process. Our train roommate with the Musical device had it go off blaring every hour or so. Hopefully he spoke English otherwise my abuse would have been lost on him. After arriving at 5am with little sleep the hotel didn't 'allow' early check in. I'm may have been quite unpleasant at this stage. Poor Emmett. St Petersburg is regal, grand, fabulous; one of my new favorite cities of the worl...