Stockholm & Tallinn
Stockholm
Wooooooow. Stockholm might be the most impressive city yet. It's got everything. The layout is perfect too. The amazingly pretty and intimate old town is the focal point and situated on an island smack bang in the middle of the buzzing outer city which itself is made up of 13 islands. If you love rivers, canals and harbours, Stockholm's got you covered. If you love beautiful architecture, it's got you covered. If you love culture and art - covered. Drinking and nightlife? Definitely covered. It's even got it's own TGI Fridays.It has café trams, some over a hundred years old, which you can ride around the city while drinking and eating. We visited Grona Lund, a famous city amusement park. It'd been themed for Halloween which excited me more than it probably should. We went on a few rides and did the horror houses. Each time we did a horror house I found myself at the back of the group we'd been put with, so all the jumps and scares kept happening for the people in front, while I was still lingering round the corner, stepping on Rach's heels as I tried to get a peek of what was going on (there was no way Rach was going at the very back). I'd effectively queued for an hour to walk around a series of corridors listening to other people scream.
On our last evening in Stockholm, when we arrived back at the Uni car park we'd been staying in, we saw three deer trotting around the pay machine. Now that's a sight I NEVER thought I'd see - deer in a car park. It was so surreal - a memorable sight to mark the end our time in Scandinavia.
Ferry
The next day we got a 9 hour ferry from Sweden to Estonia with one other girl and about twenty fat truckers.We boarded the ferry at 10am, so I was pretty dismayed when I learned that we had to have the ferry 'lunch', rather than the breakfast they also had advertised on the board. So I had chicken in mushroom sauce, onions, a giant meatball, sweetcorn, pork, and potato balls for breakfast. It made me wonder when they served their actual breakfast, if not IN THE MORNING.
Things got even weirder when, after lunchfast, the truckers hit the bar for shots. I wasn't sure what the hell was going on, but I was starting to wish I'd worn my going out clothes. A couple of the truckers then sat down to some rubbish TV while the rest of them retired to their cabins to sleep off their breakfast time shots.
The 9 hours went by fairly quickly. As the ferry docked, we made our way back to the van below deck. There was a row of massive colourful trucks parked in a line, facing us. They all sat up to attention as their portly owners got in and switched them on, preparing to leave the ferry. We then made our way off the ferry and out into the Baltics.
Tallinn
Tallinn is such a beautiful place. It's also medieval AF. We had hot apple and ginger drinks in a medieval style tavern (I love that word). There was flutey music playing in the tavern and we were served by a fair maiden in all that fancy old clobber that they wear in taverns. A family sat over the other side of the tavern were having a whale of a time. The dad was leading a song with the rest of his clan. He was making his voice boom by singing into his tankard. His kids were howling with laughter. Rach asked me if I thought I would be a good dad like that. I can't remember what I said. We left the tavern. Tavern.We had a look around the cathedral. The guy on the 'be silent' sign looked exactly like George Bush Senior. In the gift shop the stereo was playing some sort of repetitive, rhythmic religious sermon. Either that, or horse racing commentary. Or there's an outside chance it could've been the Internet Service Providings sketch from Fonejacker.
Rach started out on an epic quest to find the one birthday amber ring to rule them all. They have loads of amber jewellery shops in Tallinn. We would be looking in at least twenty before she found one she liked.
Halloween
It was Halloween. We spent the early evening wandering the cobbled streets, desperately hoping something terrifying would happen. Well, I was. Sadly, it was more romantic than scary.We had cocktails in a great little bar, which was projecting muted clips from loads of classic horror films onto the wall, which got me in the mood to go back to the van and watch one.
We watched Ghost Ship. Maybe not a classic horror film. Well, hard to even call it a horror film really. But it was a film. Nobody can take that away from it. After, we watched Mark Kermode's Exorcist documentary, which was horrifically informative.
Rach's Birthday
On our fourth day in Tallinn I surprised Rach with her birthday treat - two nights in a 5-star hotel. She teared up when I told her, which I have to say was a real shock. I thought she'd be happy. After she calmed down, we got a couple of bags sorted, locked up the van and made our way to the hotel. On arrival, the woman behind the desk upgraded us to a bigger corner room with a better view, when she noticed it was Rach's birthday. Rach's reaction this time was one of smiley delight, which was a real kick in the teeth.When we were asked for our passports, we realised we'd left them on the van and so we told the woman we'd have to go and get them. This understandably baffled her. When we got back to the hotel we explained to her that we were travelling in a van and that's where we'd gone to retrieve the passports. I noticed another member of staff who was serving some other guy sneek a peek over at us when he heard that we lived on a van.
The room was huge. Heated bathroom floor, rain shower, bath, massive comfy bed, giant windows overlooking the city and harbour. For the next 48 hours it was just room service, bubbly, bubbles, baths and chill. Rach spent the morning of her birthday watching all the videos she'd received and crying all over her breakfast in bed. She actually only left the room three times during the stay - to go swimming, eat at a steak restaurant and get a massage. The big three.
The drive to Latvia
On the day of checkout, after dragging Rach out of the room kicking and screaming, we spent one last afternoon in the old town of Tallinn. Rach finally found her ring and I finally got a belated Halloween scare when I walked by a front garden and mistook a bloke with a leaf blower for a chainsaw wielding maniac.As it was getting dark we made our way out of Tallinn and headed for the border. We were going to Riga in Latvia. It's basically one road from Tallinn to Riga, but it's not a very big road - just a narrow one laner. For the whole four hour trip it absolutely hammered it down and there were no lamps lighting the road. Baltic roads are even darker than Sweden's. A short while after we'd crossed the border into Latvia, we saw flashing blue lights appear behind us. I drove on for a while looking for a hard shoulder, but there wasn't one. I really didn't want to just pull over to the side of the narrow road while visibility was so bad but I had no choice. I stopped. A guy got out of the patrol car and came to the window. He asked for my licence and the vehicle registration document. Rach frantically flipped through our travel folder, looking for my licence, but it wasn't there. Hers was, but not mine. Typical. Eventually I found it. I handed both documents over to the guy, who proceeded to check them under his torch light. After about three seconds he said 'okay', handed the documents back over and went to walk off. Rach called him back to ask why he'd stopped us. He gave some kind of non-answery answer, then got back in his car and drove off.
As we drove on Rach told me she'd been terrified by the episode. I really wasn't sure why. It was like being in the horror house all over again.
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