Tallinn, Estonia

As usual, I’ll get straight to the point. No messing around or taking far too many keystrokes to reach the awaited conclusion on a destination. I find that to be really annoying when I read up on places. I just want to know the overall feel from the start, not have to wade through endless useless sentences to reach it. Why do people do that? It’s almost like at university where your 10,000 word essay is currently sitting at 9,000, and you have to add 10% of fluff and nonsense to make the word count match. …actually, is the term ‘keystrokes’ still viable when writing on a smartphone? They aren’t really keystrokes anymore are they? Maybe screen touches? Phone pokes? Glass nudges? Smudge makers?

Tallinn is awesome. One of our favourite cities of the whole trip. Despite the frequently described issue of yobs drinking to excess, they were all confined to a small area where they could drink, shout, and hopefully kill each other with the inevitable fight without distracting everyone else. The architecture of the city was breathtaking making the streets and alleyways a joy to navigate and get lost in. The park surrounding most of the city gave it a lovely fresh feel, while the climb up to the Patkuli viewing point was extremely rewarding.

So yeah. And that’s that. 3 months around central Europe. If I’m honest, it was a little bit too long for the location and the time of year. But we loved it all the same. Upon reflection some 6 months later, our main memories of the trip area that the big surprises were Bled, Cesky Krumlov, Poland, and Tallinn. Wonderful places. Whilst Croatia was quite a disappointment – we don’t think it suits our style of travelling. But oh well.

Next up we headed back to New Zealand for 5 weeks to sort out our Chinese visa, and then off to work in China! No rest for those with itchy feet.