First off... if you have a hankering to visit Russia and live even remotely normal lives... this is not the way to do it. You should apply and pay (albeit with much paperwork and painfully) for a visa, go for at least a couple of weeks, take your time. Definitely see Moscow as well as St Petersburg (maybe even take the Trans Siberian train). Of course, if you are like us (and not eligible for a library card) or you can get to Helsinki easily and don't mind a bi...

It's almost time for the Baltics to be behind us... We've just spend 5 days in Tallinn, Estonia. Face it, before this trip we'd have been lucky to have found any of the Baltic states on a map, let alone known anything about them. It's been a huge learning curve. We arrived last Friday (31 March) on our new favourite form of transport - the whiz bang Lux Express coach. We knew the international coach station was about 5 km outside of the Old Town (so definitely ...

OK. Right. Where are we? Riga, Latvia! We arrived on Monday 27th, seemingly even before we left Vilnius - it was an amazing coach trip and then we walked from the coach station into the old town - less than a kilometre, but felt a bit longer... those darn cobble stones. We had a stroll around the old town then succumbed to the restaurant next to the hotel for dinner - we had thought there was bound to be cheaper, but after a good explore it turns out we are liv...

When we woke up on our first morning in Vilnius... we felt more like we 'regained consciousness'. After our rush-job stopover in Stockholm and the late night arrival the previous night, let's just say it was a very, very slow morning. Breakfast. Well that took a while. It actually took quite a while just to fight our way out of the big, squishy king size bed - which was a joy after the sofa-bed in the Iceland cabin. We thought long and hard about doing a walking...

36 hours. What can you do in 36 hours? As it turns out... Arrive in Stockholm, stow big bags in lockers, get immediately onto airport bus to city, walk from central station to old town (Gamla Stan) - discovering incredible Asian/Japanese buffet restaurant along the way (memorise for dinner purposes), buy postcards and badge along the main shopping street en route to lodge - point out town hall/palace/parliament along the way. Get to lodge 2 minutes after code bec...