heading east

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Hi everyone.
Time for some more photos now that we are staying at a family friends house and can use a computer.
Since I last wrote we left Riga in Latvia - a place I totally fell in love with. Headed north through Estonia to Tallin - another beautiful Baltic city, but much smaller than Riga. Caught the ferry to Finland, stayed in Helsinki for a few nights then drove further north to the town of Imatra. And our little corsa made it here! It is looking a bit worse for wear but it made it! Now we just have to find a keen buyer who is willing to give us a 100 euros or so.
As Paul mentioned in a previous blog, we spent a few days in Tallin the capital of Estonia. yet another lovely town full of cobbled streets and old buildings.
The ferry to finland was fab, a sunny smooth crossing. As soon as we got off the ferry we drove straight to the chinese embassy hoping to get there in the last 40mins it was open. We had the best of luck, we walked straight in and were seen within 5 mins. They said come back the next morning, we did, and our passports were there with chinese visas inside. Incredible! After all this stress! So much easier than dealing with the Australian chinese embassy. Things seem to run quite smoothly here in Finland.
Anyway, for the next few days we stayed in a friends studio flat in Helsinki while he stayed at his girlfriends house. We had a great time there in Helsinki, going on mini pub crawls with Roy and Mari. Paul and Roy drank quite a bit of a horrible drink called Sarti one night - an old style finnish beer about 10% proof! After going back to mari's flat a bit merry we had a few more glasses of wine. Paul and I then had to somehow find our way back across town on the night trams - which were full of drunk finnish youth - so we fitted right in. We eventually found the flat after having to jump over peoples fences and climb through gardens. Ripping my trousers in rose bushes on the way. The map was slightly difficult to read after so much wine and beer, and my short cuts did not make things all that easy.
Anyway over the few days Roy showed us around town and we did quite a bit of relaxing in parks and beer drinking. Seems to be the finnish past time!
All through the city there were live bands playing impromtu gigs. You may be aware that in Scandinavia people love hard rock, death metal stylee. So we saw a few of those type of bands. The town is full of goth/rock type teenagers dressed in black.
Anyway, after leaving helsinki we drove up towards Imatra stoping at a small old town on the way. And now we are here relaxing with Salme and her family. We've done a few day trips out to castles etc. Also one stop in an old man's garden on the side of a highway full of strange statues. Very interesting! Tomorrow we go to stay at Salme's summer house in the woods. Should be a lovely place to relax.
A real plus of being here is the amount of daylight. It doesn't get properly dark until about 1am and then light again around 2:30am. I love it! I loved lying in bed at 12:30am last night and looking out the window to a sort of light sky. I just wish we were going even further north where is doesn't get dark at all this time of the year. I will definitely miss these long summer days when we get back to Australia.
Next friday we catch the train to russia when we finally leave western civilization and head east - can't wait!
Hope everyone is well.
All my love
xx

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Photos

P1010962
tallin

P1020001
lunch in a traditional estonian restaurant