Back with a thud

For our second day in Tallin, we decided to do something very Estonian - go for a walk in the nearby woods. The Estonians have had a very chequered past, having been conquered by all of their neighbouring countries, yet have maintained a very individual and separate culture through their ideals of closeness to nature and self-sufficiency.

It is a beautiful country, if a little more expensive that we would have liked. I guess that is the impact of the European Union which is uniting Europe in the quality and also cost of living...

We did come across one beautiful Estonian tradition though... We haven't investigated it but it looks as if when couples decide to declare their commitment to each other, they leave this as a symbol for all to see. I wonder if there are any bridges near Nynäs...?

Well, we're back in Sweden now and if there aren't any more posts for a while, it's because we are busy getting married, catching up with friends and family who have come along and then getting ready for this crazy trip.

Have a look at our wedding website if you haven't already done so.

More top tips for Tallinn

Tallinn

Top tip number one. When looking at a menu thinking, mmmm that steak looks nice, rethink. The Estonians do a lot of things well, (kitch-shops, amber, old-towns, views, city walls etc) but beef is not one of them. When given a choice, choose fish.

Number two is more of a warning if you are driving. How many times have you pleaded with the bus driver to let you off when stopped at a red light just outside of where you are going, instead of having to go 2 miles down the road to the bus stop only to be refused due to health-and-safety. Not so in Tallinn, when driving on a main through road (compare it with an a-road in England or a blue 'riksväg' in Sweden), and a tram stops in the outside lane just ahead of you - break, for the love of god, break. That might just be a tram stop and people might start pouring out, as we discovered yesterday. I was ... surprised ... to say the least, but I think we managed to keep the bumper clean.

Top-tip number three is twofold, if you are aiming here to shop for more reasonably priced alcohol, look for beer and spirits, wine is not that cheap. But make sure you have done your price check before. We found a few discrepancies in the pricing here. We've been looking for two types of wine, valpolicella and chardonnay since we are going to need about 40-50 bottles of that soon. So we made tracks to the big outlets, because obviously thats where the cheap wine would be, and we found one pretty soon that had exactly what we wanted and in bulk, so all looked good, right?? Wrong!!!
Fortunately while all the other Swedes ran wild amongst the shelves we've had gotten a few reference prices to check up on;


Masi Campofiore: Sweden 83 SEK -Tallinn 95 SEK
Tommasi Valpolicella: Sweden: 99 SEK Ferry, 91 SEK (262 SEK in the restaurant!) Tallinn : 89 SEK

Lindeman Bin 65: Sweden 73 SEK Tallinn : 100 SEK

And those are just a few examples, fortunately we brought the price list from systembolaget with us. I originally aimed to bring that as a reference to check the descriptions and recommendations, since I am not that good at reading Estonian. It turned out to be quite useful to avoid being ripped off as well.

So come prepared!

Top tip #4. Spend some time in the old town in your walking shoes and do it on a weekday. If you have a look at the pictures, you'll see that there were not that many people around. IT was quite nice to wander around, read the plaques, take lots of pictures and to stop at lovely smelling coffee shops and watch the local kids go wild. I expect it to be quite different during weekends in peak tourist season.


So we might have failed in our quest to get a huge batch of wine, but this is my first visit to Tallinn, and I really enjoyed the walkabout in the old town. It reminds me of Gamla Stan in Stockholm, but with less aggressive shop/restaurant owners trying to sell you stuff. We also managed to book ourselves into a spa hotel and made use of the hotel pool in the evening, as if the 4 hour walk wasn't enough exercise, but it felt really good afterwards.
And on top of that, just next door is a huge marina, with some gorgeous evening views accompanying a decent dinner, but again, be warned - eat fish, not meat .

Slow boat to Tallinn

After the stress of packing up all our stuff and high-tailing it for Stockholm, we decided that we needed a little break before the crazyness of the last minute wedding tasks. Cue a cruise to Tallinn using the disguise of needing to buy alcohol for the wedding...

Contrary to what they will tell you on the internet, it is possible to book a cruise on the day that you want to go, and you will probably get a better price if you do this all at the last minute. Of course, you are taking a punt here so only try this option if you are a little flexible on the dates.

My eyes have now been opened to the true meaning of a booze cruise. This is a true example. As well as the expected restaurants and disco's, a huge area on the boat was dedicated to the duty-free supermarkets. You can buy almost everything there, from wine to whisky to perfumes. Everything it seems, except for a corkscrew! Top tip: take your own corkscrew on board with you if you'd like to enjoy a bottle in your cabin.

Another top tip: don't expect lots of space in your cabin when you go for the cheapest priced cabin. However, we found that you don't actually spend a whole lot of time there so it's a bit pointless to splash out on too much luxury!

After an uneventual night (I only woke up feeling a little queasy once), we were rudely awakened by the speakers announcing that there were only two hours remaining for us to have breakfast and get out of there. Very thoughful of them :(

We approached a very wet Tallinn... beautiful from the distance but still exciting to be in a new country, and on such a noble quest.

More later on how we get on...

Landed

Well we managed to convince the nice BA man at the counter that we did actually have three bags each as our allowance for the flight (note, pay for an extra bag on the internet before you fly - it's much cheaper) and then we were off.

So, we're in Sweden now, and though we will do a few touristy things (if I have anything to say about it), our main purpose here is to set up our flat, get married and recharge before our big adventure which starts on the 8th September.

For those of you planning to come to Sweden for our wedding later on this month, there will be a race for those of you who travel from the airport to Nynäshamn. The clock starts ticking when when you head through the doors from the baggage section to the outside world and ends when the train pulls into the station at Nynäshamn. Prizes for the winners.

For those a little less adventurous, I will be compiling a set of picture instructions which should help you find the way and putting them on our wedding blog.

Now we're off to see if the Swedish authorities will permit us to get married here - yikes! I hope so, or else all this work will have gone to waste... I hope none of the people invited to the wedding are reading this now...

We're about to head off

The adventure starts here, well for Vaniah it does, I'm just going back home for a few weeks.

If anyone thinks its difficult living out of a suitcase for such a long time? No problem - just bring a boatload of suitcases, as you can see we are... :)
And a golfbag.
Who says going around the world is roughing it??

We've been running around like little mad people for the past few days sorting out the admin, packing up, shipping things so apologies for the ones we havent been getting back to, fortunately they have phones and internet in Sweden too.

You'll be hearing from us soon again, after our 'first leg'

Itinenerary

We are getting a lot of questions about where we are going, so I thought it might be a good idea to make that a post.
And it will also give us a perfect location to collect all the suggestions of where to stay, eat, avoid etc that people keep giving us.

So please, make use of the comments.

So this is the itinerary, though there is a big disclaimer, nothing of this is set in stone (apart from christmas, that is a fixed date)

• Japan , 10 days
• Tokyo, a few days to explore Tokyo and fight jet-lag. We'll probably hit the fish market and the camera shopping district. Once we get back from Kyoto we'll go see some Sumo wrestling and hopefully meet up with some of the people we know in Tokyo.
  
• Kyoto/Nara/Kobe(?) for a couple of days to explore some of the must-sees on a short trip. We were hoping to explore a litle bit south on the peninsula as well (There is this monestary which is supposed to be superbly tranquil, fingers crossed)
• China. 5 weeks (roughly)
• We'll start out in Beijing for a few days to see the palaces, parks, squares etc
• Xi'an will be the next stop, to see the terracotta wariors
• Off to somewhere we can spot some Pandas (Chengdu, wolong??)
  
• A yangtze cruise from chonqing to yichan
  
• To Shanghai for a few days
• Guilin, to give my new lens (see Tokyo) a whirl in some stunning surroundings
• Hong-Kong to catch our flight to Singapore
• Singapore, 1 week
  
• Meeting up with Vaniahs cousin, eating and sleeping.
• Australia 4 weeks
• Adelaide, winecountry. Enough said
• Alice springs, Uluru. Apparently that big red rock has to be seen so we will.
• East Coast, Cairns to Straddie in about 2 weeks to see some coral reefs, beautiful sand-dunes, surf etc..
• Sydney, a birthday dinner for Vaniah at the Darling Harbour, a bridge climb(?) and maybe some aussie-rules football..
• New Zealand 3.5 weeks
• Auckland, Bay of Islands, Rotouru on the north island , christchurch, the glaciers, the fjords and whalespotting on the south island.
  
• We havent really planned this, and there are so many places to see, We'll probably rent a car and stop where we feel like stopping.
• USA, 1 week
  
• Houston, meeting up with Suzanna and Neil, Vaniah's sister and brother-in-law who lives there.
  
• We will see the space centre and whisper "Houston-we-have-a-problem" at some point
• Jamaica, 2 weeks
  
• For Christmas and a second wedding reception.
  
• Peru,
  
• Iquitos and an amazon jungle lodge for a few days
• Cuzco and a trek to Machu Pichi
• Bolivia,
  
• We'll need to get to Argentina, and Bolivia is on the way. I'm sure there are interesting places to see on the way
• Argentina.
• We'll be arriving from somewhere in the north, depending how the buses go, and will be travelling south
• Mendoza is probably the first target.
  
• Then Patagonia
• Then gaucho country (I believe thats the central plains) for some horseback-riding.
• Iguazo falls.
• Buenos aires, Tango dancing, football season will just have started, can't be that bad can it?
  

We're aiming for a return in Mid March somewhere, I'd really not want to miss my grandfathers 90th birthday, so maybe thats a good target.


There, thats a general idea of what we'll be getting up to, now please give us ideas...