from Tallinn to Helsinki

I often make stupid choices. This is the only way to justify my decision to venture on a week-long trip to Helsinki, Tallinn and Riga at the height of the coldest month of the year, February. In my defence, I'd been wanting to go to the Baltic states since I worked at summer camp with a girl from Estonia in 2002. And I didn't go blindly into the valley of ice--Rosa and her friend, Derryn, were accomplices in my foray.

So let's call the trip a lack of clear communication.

I've gotten into the habit of meticulously planning my work, social and private life. So when it comes to travelling, I need a reprieve and all I do is book the flight, close my eyes and hope it all works out. I hate booking hotels and hostels. I don't check weather reports. I just crack open the lonely planet/wikitravel page when I get on the plane and/or hope someone else is more organised than me. This may come as a surprise to those of you who know me. But it's true.

As it turned out, Derryn was far more organised than me. He works for a tour booking agency and found us as cheap hotel deal. He thumbed through guidebooks and decided that we should spend three nights in Helsinki, one night in Tallinn and two nights in Riga. I was skeptical but didn't argue.
Like lambs to the slaughter, Rosa and I stumbled off the plane in Tallinn to hop straight onto a ferry across the Gulf of Finland to Helsinki where Derryn awaited us. Hordes of people loaded onto a cruise ship sized boat that cut across the ice in a surreal feat of man versus machinery.


These hordes stocked up on duty free inexpensive beer and liquor by the crateload. Students, professionals, old people alike. We laughed condescendingly and commented on their apparent alcoholism. How little we knew.

On the other side, Derryn greeted us with a wall of arctic, freeze-any-body-part-that's-not-covered-air. -24 degrees celsius air. Air that takes your breath away. Air that doubles you over in pain because, strangely, it's so cold you feel like you're on fire.

and that was only the beginning.

We checked into the hotel and began the process of bundling up that took at least five minutes--Tshirt, jumper, second jumper, scarf, gloves, coat, snood, hat. Outer extremeties covered? check. Face covered? check. Walking plan made to jump into a building within a five to seven minute window? Double Check.
We sought drink. It seemed logical seeing as it was so bloody cold. three rounds each and 100 euro (each) later, we came to the sobering realisation that Helsinki lived up to its name--hell on earth. A bottle of wine cost 26 euro, entry to a mediocre club, 14 euro and outside, still a soaring low of -24c.

We re-consulted the guidebook to find another sobering set of comments: 'go here and here with excellent this and that'. Okay, fine. Followed by the phrase: 'open in summer only' attached to every.single.free.cheap.and/or exciting thing to do. And next to the things that did indeed remain open through the ice-fires of hel: 'closed on sundays in winter'.

good thing we arrived on a saturday night.

Paris (the second day)

One day of glorious weekend sushine was enough to ask for on a late November weekend, thus we were greeted with horizontal rain and gale force winds upon wakeup at St Christopher's Inn on a lazy Paris Sunday. We didn't care. Paris is Paris! and when you're travelling with reunited americans, the Europe is Europe! attitude takes over. I can't explain it but it's something like Europhilia on triple espressos. I'm not complaining; I led the pack.


We'd finished off the night before at a cozy and grafittied, specialising in Sangria, student bar called 'Le 10 Bar', on rue d'la Odeon, somewhere in Paris's boho Quartier Latin. The quarter is a mess of cobbled, narrow streets and tiny pavements. V. cool. But with the sangria going straight to our heads, we stumbled home and made a less than early start the next day.

at Marché aux Puces de St-Ouen...lots of dead animals, funky smells, avante garde street performers and interesting clothing choices


After waiting out the rain with extra large hot chocolates and various tastes of market fayre, we marched endlessly towards le tour eiffel, taking a series of ridiculous photos.



The beauty of travelling with very-good-at-what-they-enjoy amateur photgraphers, is that you see places in a totally different light. Lights, angles, viewpoints all begin to throw themselves in front of you. I was actually excited to see the Eiffel Tower for the third time in my life.

That, and seeing Nasim's face when the hunkering tower of metal snuck into the skyline was pretty priceless.


beauty in a reflection in a puddle
and then this

After our highly nutritious dinner of Bastardy, crisps and fromage, I left Nasim and Jason at the hostel to return back to London reality. It would be romanticly american to say that I gazed longingly out past the french countryside, sideways beret clad composing poetry about the delightful weekend I had.
In reality, I passed out as soon as train wheels hit the track and woke up abruptly at St. Pancras station.

Paris! (day one)

I'm not sure why i've posted an exclamation mark next to the title of this entry. Paris and I are not intimately acquainted with one another. I don't consider myself a parisophile (i'm sure there's a word for this). But this funny thing happened when Nasim, her friend Jason and I ventured for a weekend away at the end of November.

I started to see its appeal.

And maybe it was eurostar, the delightful city centre to city centre high speed train that takes you from Kings Cross St Pancras to Gar de Norde in 2.4 hours--that's barely a nap. Or maybe it was Montmartre. Or maybe it was the rekindling of emotions and memories of study abroad days long gone by.

The last time I was in Paris I got something of an authentic experience by staying with Elodie, my good friend from my Edinburgh days. In fact, my blog's birth documented that trip as my first on this here blog space. Those were the days of bad formatting and no captions. And now, it seems i've come full circle. So maybe it's got very little to do with Paris and more to do with being a grown-up, whatever that is.

Regardless, the three of us eurostarred it in arriving late on friday night and I came back sans travelling companions late sunday night in order to get back to that slog I call work. Nothing remarkable happened. But it was europe. Real, live, people are not speaking english europe.

We ate. We drank. We got lost.
And since Nasim and Jason had never been before, we did every single i'm a tourist walking in paris thing known to man. Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, Eiffel tower again, walks on the Seine, crepes, Montmatre, etc. I tried to be super cool with my pink fuji camera sandwiched between my photographically clad friends with multiple zoom lensed Canons. I am happy to admit that my photos don't look so bad.

Montmartre
I've finally figured out how to simultaneously pronounce both r sounds in this city borough. It's expensive. It's touristy, artisty and bohemian. my favourite!






Notre Dame




Along the River
something french, salmony and delightful
restaurants on the touristy left bank
Shakespeare and Company, an amazing, albiet expensive, english bookstore near Notre dame

Chain Bridge


day two to come!