Snowdonia, North Wales - 24th to 28th of December 2009

After grabbing some pressies, some santa hats and plenty of warm clothes we picked up our rental car and our mates early on the 24th and jumped on the motorways for our trip north west to Wales. The further we got away from London, the prettier the roads, with some spectacular sights once we left the motorways. About 6 hours later we made it to our little cottage in Blaenau Ffestiniog.

Thanks to a lack of central heating, our cottage was FREEZING, so we were up early Christmas morning to stoke the fire. We miss having a fireplace, so was nice and romantic snuggling up in front of it for a few days.

After an awesome Christmas breaky, we went for a little walk to see some of the countryside around Blaenau.

Boxing day ended up being a tour of the castles of northwest wales. First up Harlech Castle.

Caernafon:

View of the countryside from the Isle of Anglesey:

Beaumaris Castle:

...and finally Conwy Castle:

The 27th we decided to go for a bit of a wander. Braving the cold we found a nice circuit to do, up and over and through a valley to a nice little pub and around along a river back to the car. Well that was the plan anyway, turns out we cant follow directions very well and the path we were on seemed to disappear, so we had to turnaround and go back the way we came. Still, some spectacular scenery:

And that was the end of our little Christmas trip to Wales. Back through some more amazing scenery to London on the 28th:

Helsinki (Finland) - 21st to 22nd of November 2009

Arriving back in Helsinki at 3pm, we had one objective, to drop our bags at the hostel and find our way to a pub to watch the All Blacks play England at 4. Still had time for a sunset shot though (at about 3.30!). Managed to make it to an Aussie pub that was playing the game at about 4.25 - turns out the game started at 4.30 - score!
After a round of drinks at the pub cost €16, we headed back to the hostel for a quiet one. Sunday, our last day on tour was another early one to make sure we made the most of the daylight. We tripped over to the sea fort Suomenlinna, only 15minutes away by ferry. Originally built by the Swedes in 1748 to protect against Russian expansionism, but the pesky Russians still managed to take over the fortress in 1808, marking the end of the Finnish war. It was used during WW1 as part of the naval fortification to protect St Petersburg, and was given back to independent Finland as a result of the Russian Revolution in 1917. In case you cant tell, we were both intrigued by Suomenlinna, and was definitely the highlight of our Finnish holiday.
We even stumbled across a small old submarine from WWII, the only Finnish submarine that remains after Finland was required to decommission its fleet at the end of the war.

Back into central Helsinki and through one of its many parks.

After a quick stroll past the site of the 1952 olympics, we ended up at the winter gardens, basically a large glasshouse containing a bunch of exotic plants, excluding some massive cacti.

Helsinki has a prety extensive tram network, even including a tram version of the cirlce line. Its basically a cheap tour of Helsinki, so we did the loop, taking about an hour. Unfortunately it was all too much for Ange who was asleep for most of it!

Obvioulsy right on the coast, Helsinki has plenty of coastline, and we managed to squeeze in a quick walk while the light was fading.
Free ice-skating rink in the main square, if you have your own skates that is, which clearly all Finns do, and we didn't.
Being smart, we had saved the only indoor thing we wanted to do until the sun had set at 4pm, the City of Helsinki Museum.

And that was that. Back to the hostel to pick up our bags and head to the airport after two amazing weeks of beers, language difficulties, amazing scenery and COLD!

Tampere, Finland - 20th to 21st of November 2009

Finland is only an hour and a quarter by ferry from Talinn, so Friday morning we jumped on the 8am boat north across to Helsinki. But Helsinki was scheduled for Saturday night, so we walked through town to the train station and jumped on a train north to Tampere. Only an hour and a half away, Tampere is situated on a river that runs between two large lakes. The weather on Friday unfortunately meant we couldn't do too much, and we only managed a quick walk around town.

Trying to minimise costs in mega-expensive Finland, we went back to the hostel via a supermarket and ate in, with a few beers of course. Again we tried to find some nightlife, lets just say the beers and wine in Finland are a fraction more expensive than Estonia!!

Between the two lakes is apparently the highest gravel ridge in the Northern Hemisphere. It didn't look very high to us, but still to high to walk on Saturday morning after a pretty big night - go the taxi's! Well worth the trip up though to see the views over the lakes.

Feeling slightly better after a scone at the visitor centre, we walked back down through the trees into town for a mid-afternoon train back to Helsinki.

Tallinn (Estonia) - 18th and 19th of November 2009

After another early morning and a 4 and a half hour bus ride, we arrived in the capital of Estonia, Tallinn. Having left behind Riga, we were very happy to find another very beautiful old town with winding cobbled streets and colourful houses. The medieval town hall.

We spent the afternoon wandering the streets, getting lost in old Tallinn.

Tallinn had the one thing that Riga was missing, some good old town walls. Nearly circling the whole of the old town, they are in good shape, and full of towers.

More walking...

Russian Orthodox church, the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, built between 1894 and 1900 as part of a general wave of Russification in the Russian Baltic provinces in the last quarter of the 19th Century.

We even made it out of the centre to Kadriorg park, about 2km west of the centre, for a few snaps of the Kadriorg Palace, home of the President.

Again we spent some time in search of some nightlife. We were moderately successful this time, Ange making the most of the free drinks on "ladies night Wednesdays".

Thursday we signed up to a tour put on by the hostel to see the Estonian coastline west of Tallinn. Ange and I were the only ones to sign up, but luckily enough the tour leader (and hostel owner) still took us, he just brought his wife and 1 year old daughter along for the ride. It was like being on a family outing, all snug in the back of his people mover.

The first stop was just off the highway for a lookout back over to the beach, one of Tallinn's favourite summer escapes.

A few minutes down the road for another quick stopoff, this time for a little stroll through a park and down to a pretty awesome waterfall. Apparently, at 6.1m, its Estonia's second highest.

By now it was about midday, so time for some sunset shots! After a week of grey skys, we finally got a sunny day, and we realised that the sun never seems to get very high above the horizon. It leaves you wondering if the sun is rising or setting, and how bad it must be in the true depths of winter!

Our destination for the day was a little town called Paldiski. It was once the most heavily militarised soviet base on the Estonian coast. Our guidebook suggested that the old nuclear submarine base and crumbling barracks could still be seen, but over the last couple of years the Estonian Government decided this wasn't such a good thing, and set about demolishing them. Today it is a very sleepy town full of port workers and communist-looking concrete block apartment buildings. The only thing to see now is on the far side of town where there are some pretty impressive limestone cliffs.

After a surprisingly good lunch in Paldiski we stopped in at an old monastery on the way back to Tallinn. Very much in ruins, the stonework made it absolutely freezing, but we had a great time clambering over, under and around what's left of the 13th century buildings.

With another early morning in store for us on Friday, we called it quits early on Thursday night, but not before demolishing some savoury pancakes for dinner (apparently its what you do in that part of the world).