More travel stories - summer 2004

Well, it was about time....
Here are some photos from our north-europe trip on July 2004.
We started from Finland, passing from Tampere to Helsinki. Pretty nice place to live (if you dont mind sleeping with sunlight during the summer), very relaxed, peaceful, organized and not as expensive as we thought it to be. An advice: go there during the winter and visit the northern part of the country and especially the countryside, lakes and forests, the cities don't really worth it, too civilized!


This picture is from Helsinki during sunset (at 23:00 in the night!)


From there we passed to Tallinn, such a wonderful medieval old town, this was what made my trip worth it. I had the best three days there, just walking around the small streets and looking at the colourful buildings.

We stayed at a very familiar-type hostel, really nice, great location in the old town, called "Old House", if you ever go to Tallinn try it and you won't regret it.

For the end we left the "dificult" part of the trip, Russia. Just crossing the borders in a night train between Tallinn and St. Petersburg makes you nervous, the border police control wakes you up at 2 o clock in the morning checking every detail of your passport and visa. Imagine after that reaching St. Petersburg at 8 o clock tired and dirty and not being able to find any help in order to reach your hostel, not even a person speaking english. The hostel didnt really make you feel any better, extra security with access-codes all over the place gave you the sensation of alert, the building was one of these big typical sovietic structures and one day we had a "surprise" inspection of the papers of all the people living there.

I dont know why but I left a bit dissappointed from St. Petersburg. I cannot say it is a very beautiful town, despite of the many incredible buildings, churches and palaces(especially at the two sides of the river). In general it left me the image of a huge-dirty-decadanced town, with old (but VERY old!!) cars and trams, drunk and poor people all over and an attempt - thankfully not succesful- to rob us. The only thing I regret is not seeing one of the ballet shows, it was too late when we discovered that the ticket was extremelly cheap and we had a train to catch. Next time.

From there we headed to Moscow, for the last stop of my journey and a large visit to the famous Red Square and the outside of Kremlin. Didn't manage to see much, too few time, I think next time I 'll try to go during winter. In my opinion Moscow is much more beautiful than they say it is and I have to go again and see more.



Well, one kiss to Alvar and Miki who tolerated me all these days during the trip and thanks for all the help :)