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We’ve spent the last 2 days taking it easy, so there’s not been to much exciting to report. We did a little shopping and visited a beautiful church, and have been hanging out with some awesome people that I’m profoundly sad to leave. Luckily, Heinola (where we head to tomorrow) is only 30 minutes away, so Veikko said he’d likely come and hang out with us some more.

Downtown Lahti

Lahti’s Market Square (albeit an empty market square)

Company at Santa Fe (sans wife)

Beautiful Old Church

Graveyard Surrounding Church

Stairs we climbed to a tower

View from said tower

Company at dinner (sans one off to the right)

Robert’s Coffee for breakfast

Cabin for sauna, and fun with candles

Kaisu, and fun with candles

Sunset in Lahti

Don’t tell anyone, but we might move here.

Last night we visited Uniq, a small club in Helsinki with an ice bar!

The place had a lot of character, I must say.

Inside, there was a dance floor and 2 bars. You buy a drink ticket from either of the bars for 10 Euro, which gives you entry (and 1 drink) to the Arctic Ice Bar.

Finlandia was the only drink available inside. Can I say corporate sponsorship?

The DJ was decent. He played 2 great choons but the rest was not my flavour.

Tallinn, the capitol of Estonia, is very possibly the most beautiful city Maija and I have ever been in. As mentioned, the cruise is quite affordable, though you don’t get a cabin unless you pay extra for one. At 3 hours, a cabin’s not really necessary (though we chose to get one for the ride home, as we were both exhausted).

The ship featured a few bars and cafes, and a large market, with the widest selection of alcohol I’ve ever seen in one place. It also featured some of the largest bottles of alcohol we’d ever seen.

Estonia buys and spends with the Kroon. One Euro is about 15 Kroon, so allow yourself to be alarmed at the prices, but then settle back into sweet realisation that Estonia’s actually pretty cheap.

We took LOADS of photos in Tallinn, so here’s but a smattering of what you’ll find over on flickr.

Ridiculously large bottle, onboard the ship

City scape

Tourist

Beautiful church

View from inside tower of church

View from the top

Olde Hansa (medieval restaurant)

The item I tried to order, but unfortunately was told the hunting season didn’t start till September. Recently they had had some available due to a hit & run, but not today.

We chatted with some folks on the ferry ride to Suomenlinna yesterday, and they explained the smell of smoke that lingers in the air in Helsinki. Apparently there is a huge forest fire in Russia and the wind blows the smoke over. Many asthma sufferers have had to go to hospitals. So Russia doesn’t feel like fighting the fire and instead are letting it burn. “Finland” is pissed and has repeatedly offered to put out the fire themselves. Russia doesn’t want any help, and some speculate its because Russia had planned to cut down that forest anyways and build on the land. So some here are pretty bitter complaining that the Russians are sipping Vodka and watching the fire burn.