Day 11 Arrived in Vilnius after passing through modern out of town shopping areas that could have placed us anywhere in Europe and some of them wouldn't have looked out of place in Britain in the 1970's! Our hotel,thankfully for Colin, has air conditioning which will guarantee he will have a good night sleep! Walking around the old town it is clear that the most things we are going to see on this tour are churches and any architecture from 17th century when th...

Day 10 Today was spent sightseeing in Riga with Phil and Sandy. We did all the tourist sights along with a couple beer stops! It started raining briefly around lunchtime so we went into a shoe shop which was arranged in rooms around a house which was brilliant to see how the house would have been furnished around the 1940's -1950's. A few of the monuments we visited were informative telling the story about the soviet and German occupation and the exterminati...

Day 9 Travelling from Tallinn to Riga was most interesting. Although again the scenery of arable farming and forests where similar to those in Scandinavia the buildings and machinery were quite different. We can tell that we are in former soviet countries by the Unitarian outlook to some of the buildings especially blocks of flats and some factories; however both Estonia and Latvia are changing and making their own mark and establishing their own identity. We ...

What a fantastic and easy transition from Scandanavia to Estonia. The ferry and the crossing were just perfect. The tannoy announced when it was 8.30 and told us that we'd be docking at 10, which we duly did. Then it was straight off the ferry- no passport control checks and then a few 100 metres to our hotel where we booked in straight away; so we could unload our bags and change before going into the old town.We spent the day sightseeing and partaking of the oc...

Today started off with Colin eating bacon, wild boar sausage and scrambled egg followed by dried reindeer meat, water melon and strawberries and ended with him eating veal steaks followed by pavlova and M&M's! Quite an eclectic menu with roast turkey and cheese on toasted bread for lunch! His capacity for food amazes me!We had a brilliant day sightseeing in Stockholm again. We visited the Vassamuseem which houses a 14th century wooden war ship (my blog pictur...