For anyone visiting Russia, Moscow is a must-see, even though the city is not really representative of the whole country. We have visited a number of capitals on our trip and they tend to come with certain pluses and minuses. + Plenty of other tourists We met more people from the UK here than on the rest of our journey. Despite it being the off season, our hostel was full of other travellers, from Germany, Chile and India among others. However, Russian tourists ...

We arrived into Saint Petersburg after midnight, having crossed the border on the train. Our taxi ride to our hostel was absolutely jaw dropping. We drove past all the main sights and in the dark, all lit up, they are really quite impressive. The size and grandeur of the Hermitage and Nevsky Prospect is not what we expected having come through the Eastern bloc. This was then surpassed when we went out to see Peterhof and Catherine's Palace. I was also surprised ...

We had a very brief time in Estonia, only 26 hours but we really liked it. This was helped by staying in a great hostel, where we met some wonderfully friendly people, both fellow new comers to Tallinn and those with family and friends here. There is something beautiful that happens when people get together around a table to eat and we really connected with a lot of people here. Despite our small time slot, we managed to get a lot in. We joined a walking tour pa...

We arrived in Riga with wonderful sunshine. Our initial wander round to see what the centre was like took in parks, grand squares and our first Russian Orthodox church. Like many of these churches, the inside was a restoration after the communists gutted all religious buildings and repurposed them for other uses, such as the Synagogue which became a warehouse. The outside of the buildings was almost all original though, as Riga has a preference for building new t...

Chapter 12: In which Lucy grows up a bit. We had arranged some time to book our future journeys (and generally organise ourselves) in Kaunas, the second largest city in Lithuania. We hope that there would be sufficient sightseeing opportunities but not too many distracting us from our goal. We arrived into our apartment in the late afternoon and Lucy's sensitive nose picked up the many unwanted smells in our basement flat. Determined though not to have a repeat...