The Baltic, See

So, being unable to find an ínternet cafe for the last few days, my octogenarian Aunt has a computer with excellent connection at her house. She says she doesn't understand it or use it, but that her children set it up for when they occasionally drop in. Thus, for the next four days while we´re in Stockholm I'll be able to attend to my backlog of emails and things to do. But before all of that, I can now tell you all about the Baltic adventures Claire and I have had since leaving our trans-Siberian family and venturing off on our own.
The overnight bus from St Petersburg was the final 'stressful' boarder crossing for us (excluding convincing the English boarder patrol to let us in) on this trip. We got to the boarder at 1am and spent 2 hours sitting around, being pulled off the bus, being put back off the bus etc. Thankfully we´re now in the EU, where there is virtually no boarder control between countries, and being Aussie doesn't mean pre-arranging visas for entry.
Tallinn It Like It Is
We got to Tallinn early on a raining Saturday morning, so it was dead quiet - we had the whole place to ourselves for a while. It's a very cute old city that has been very well preserved and restored. We spent two days binging on museums, churches, galleries, and, off all things, Mexican food. It really wasn't intentional, but each day around lunch time we just happened to come across a good looking, affordable Mexican restaurant, and seems Claire hasn't been within cooee of a tortilla for 8 months we made the most of the opportunity.
Tallinn is strange in that I'm not sure where the actual population of the city lives. The old town consists almost entirely of museums, galleries, souvenir stores, bad restaurants and cafes and more souvenirs. It's like Disney for Euro-Tourists. It's not even like Venice, where if you walk down enough side streets you'll find the local population. Normally this situation makes me sad, but the Estonians who I ran into and talked to seemed to be so genuinely proud of the city, and the extent to which it's been preserved that I gained an appreciation of what a feat that is, considering that it was pretty heavily bombed during WW2.
Architecture (And Islands and Food and Shopping) In Helsinki After 2 days in Estonia we caught a ferry north to Helsinki. Now, I've heard rumours that Helsinki is cool. Like Prague, Edinburgh, Berlin and Stockholm before it, Helsinki is apparently cool du jour. I'd have to say that it's not so much cool, but it's certainly nice. It is small, clean, open, and has that effortless Scandinavian elegance - but it's just too small and nice to be cool. It's full of chic kitchen wares rather than chic fashion, and it's cafes are homely, not boho. Still Claire and I had a lovely time there, we visited the island fortress Soumelinna, and spent a lot of time at the food hall (cheap baguettes helped to offset the otherwise costly nature of the Scandinavian lifestyle).We also did something that I've been avoiding for some time now, clothes shopping. We hit up all the cheap and cheerful retailers (H&M, Vero Moda, Indiska etc) and I now own more than 2 summer skirts and 3 t-shirts. This is really a positive step, because the weather has taken a turn for the colder in the last couple of weeks. While it was 22C in Moscow less than a fortnight ago, it was 6C in Helsinki yesterday. Given my predilection for gloves, scarves, hats and coats, the change in temperature has been met with great relish.
Taking Stock(holm)After an amusing overnight ferry ride, in which we were in a cabin deep in the hull (the part of the ship in which everyone in Titanic were Irish and died very early on) we have arrived in Stockholm. We're spending the next four nights with our Aunt Sophie (nan's sister). I'll post all about how much I love Stockholm later - provided Sophie doesn't feed us to death first...