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Published: March 7th 2008
Dublin
At the St. James Gate Brewery....we didn't want to spend money to go on the tour, so we just took pictures instead.What started as a day-dream at work, became a crazy reality last week.
I started my trip with a visit to Dublin with some of my friends from Prague. A girl we met during our teaching course lives there now, so we stayed with her for a couple nights.
Then I took my one-way flight to Finland! It seemed like a good idea at the time, but as I was landing in Tampere, I realized that having nothing planned was going to be more stressful than I thought. I knew that I had 6 days to get from Tampere, Finland back to Prague.
I spent some time in Tampere before taking the train down to Helsinki for the night. I should probably begin by saying that it was freezing there. What did I expect? I'm not sure exactly, but the ground was covered with snow and my nose didn't stop running for days.
I missed my 1030 ferry from Helsinki even after I took the tram across the city and then ran like a madman to the terminal. I was there 15 minutes early, but apparently, not early enough to get my name on the "passenger manifest"....whatever that means.
I got
Temple Bar
the Temple Bar area of Dublin had some crazy nightlife. the next ferry to Tallinn, Estonia, where I was greeted by a huge snowstorm. The city was amazing though; really old, and a lot smaller than Prague. I had an amazing bus ride from Tallinn to Riga, Latvia and when the 4 hour trip was over, I was hoping to stay on the bus...but the driver didn't think that was funny.
I spent that night and all the next day touring Riga, which was an amazing city with some old architecture and and awesome park in the the middle, but, it was freezing cold there too. Every hour the sky would go black and it would snow like crazy for 15 minutes and then the sun would come out again.
To save time and money, I took and overnight bus to Vilnius, Lithuania and it was absolutely terrible. The bus was crammed full of snoring Lithuaniana with the worst morning breath I have ever smelled...I got the Vilnius at 7AM, exhausted, but the weather was awesome...cold, but awesome. Vilnius is home to the largest old town in Europe and it was a great place to enjoy a morning cup of coffee.
When it came time to pay for said cup
Helsinki
Helsinki was an awesome city, a lot of buildings looked like the were from Russia, but then again, Saint Petersburg is so close. of coffee, I realized my ATM/credit card was missing. After searching all of my stuff, I realized my card was somewhere in Latvia still, probably being used by whoever had it.
That kind of put a damper on the rest of my day, but I walked 3km to the only internet cafe in town and cancelled my card with the bank in Prague.
It was a 10 hour train trip to Warsaw, Poland and I slept almost the entire time. Warsaw was a HUGE city, not sure what i expected there, but it was too big. So I got a hostel and went to bed. The hostel was a dump, and I shared a 12-bed dorm with some loud snorers, but that was fine, because I could barely hear myself breath over the sound of the highway directly outside our window...
The next day was much better because I took the train to Krakow and I love it there. Lot's of cool cafe's and all the pierogi I could eat!
Since I got all my sightseeing done in Krakow during the day, I decided to take the night train to Prague. I splurged on a sleeper car for another 10Euro
Estonia
Tallinn was one of my favorite stops, it was right on the Baltic Sea and the Old Town was....well, old. and it was definitely worth it. There were 6 beds crammed in our tiny compartment. An American guy on the bottom bunk, me in the middle, and a Japanese guy on the top (3rd) bunk...he didn't know what the hell he had gotten himself into. I got back to Prague at 7AM and was happy to know where I was again, and where to find cheap bread and beer.
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