travels with an ageing punkrocker/publisher
Vilnius (though the locals barely pronounce the second i) the capital of Lithuania (which is spelt locally as Lietuva) is an interesting place. It’s the second largest city in the Baltics, with just a few less people than Riga, Lithuania is the most populous of the three countries, and as Laura told us yesterday, has a more spread out population […]
Read moreA long day on the road. We booked a transfer tour from Riga to Vilnius with Traveller.ee, so we were up and ready before 9am, having a breakfast of the last of the smoked pork and other random bits. We met Laura (pronounced more like lauw-ra rather than lora) and soon a group of eight of us were on the […]
Read moreThe Riga Aviation Museum is a museum in a very different sense of the word to how we would generally understand it. It’s out by the Riga airport, so it takes about 20-30 minutes to get to, including a bit of forest where you start to wonder if you’ll ever be seen again. Through this, we pulled up at a […]
Read moreOur first full day in Riga and, well, it’s closed for Jani Day, their midsummer public holiday. It turns out that in these parts, the pagan cosplay also involves staying up until dawn, screaming at the dawn, then going to bed. So we missed out on the majority of the celebration, but I’m okay with that, it’s cool that we […]
Read moreHello Latvia! Having set an alarm to make sure that we’d be up in time for breakfast, check out, and a taxi to the bus station, we were awake well before. First there were the crowd of folks who decided to have a bit of a street party outside our window at 4am, I guess in fairness it was already […]
Read moreAnother full day in sunny, historic Tallinn. We headed out into the suburbs to see a bit more of Tallinn and check out some shopping. We took the tram, and after a couple of stops could hear an accordion playing, followed soon after by a teenage boy with a cup seeking donations. Not many other passengers paid any notice, and […]
Read moreA full day in Tallinn. Started with the hotel breakfast, which was okay, a bit chaotic as breakfast buffets go, but I was introduced to the Estonian “superfood” kama, a mixture of different flours (generally barley, rye, oat, pea but others could be involved) which was mixed with milk like a smoothie. So a grainy super smoothie or something. We […]
Read moreSaid farewell to Helsinki this morning as we boarded the Gabriella to Tallinn. As we’d heard, there were a number of passengers whose luggage consisted solely of fold-up trolleys, as their mission was to catch the ferry, head to nearest liquor shop in Tallinn, stock up and then catch the next ferry home, as apparently the price difference for booze […]
Read moreOur last full day in Helsinki, so we spent it eating, walking, shopping, sightseeing, and for me another sauna. We headed to the harbourfront markets for an early lunch and to check out the various stalls selling souvenirs, things made from wood, reindeer, elk, amber, silver, and other assorted animals. L has been eying off various warm hats, but in […]
Read moreA full day in Helsinki. With the weather forecast promising sun, we took one of the harbour tour boats for a bit of fresh air and history. People have called Helsinki home for thousands of years, but it’s first major development kick was thanks to the Swedish occupiers in the 16th century. They turned Helsinki into a major trading hub, […]
Read moreSpent most of the morning’s ferry cruise dealing with Optus help trying to get reconnected. At various times I was connected to Swedish, Finnish, and Estonian telcos but at no point would any data flow. In the end Optus have cut my 5G access at account level, which seemed to work (I say seemed as I wouldn’t be surprised if […]
Read moreToday is brought to you by Optus Global Roaming is shite. Legs a little stiff and sore, I got up and started the blog. made some progress, then my phone stopped talking the language of data, and what basically followed involved being told a bunch of crap from a support person who did everything to assume me, the customer, was […]
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