Helsinki, Finland

Friday

After arriving at Hotel Finn in the centre of Helsinki just before midnight on Thursday night, we had a sleep in before we got going on Friday morning. We found breakfast in a cafe on the 4th floor of a huge department store called Stockmann. The department store was amazing and breakfast was quite delicious too!

Finland is a Nordic country, bordered by Sweden to the west, Norway in the north, Russia to the east, while Estonia lies across the Gulf of Finland to the south. Finland has a population of around 5.5 million, most of whom live in the southern part of the country. It is the 8th largest country in Europe in terms of area and it is also the most sparsely populated country in the European Union. Apparently Finland has over 188,000 lakes! Woah. Helsinki is the largest and capital city, with a population approaching 600,000, although around 1.1 million people live within the wider metropolitan area.

After breakfast we wandered through the pretty streets of Helsinki. We certainly noticed a temperature difference between Romania and Finland. Helsinki's position on the globe is about equivalent to the Shetland Islands, comfortably north of mainland Scotland! We had been told that Helsinki was not the most attractive place to visit, but we thought it was actually quite nice. We walked down Pohjoisesplanadi (the esplanade), which has a strip of park/gardens full of statues and fountains running down the centre. This took us down to the waterfront where we visited the market. There were some really cool things for sale at the market. Tim bought Megan some birthday ear-rings made from silver and a stone called spectrolite, which is apparently only found in Finland.

We then carried on around the waterfront and checked out the Uspenski Cathedral, an Eastern Orthodox cathedral, which was beautifully decorated inside. From there, we made our way to Senate Square, the city's main square. The Senate Square presents four of Carl Ludvig Engel's architectural gems representing the political, religious, scientific and commercial powers of Helsinki. The Helsinki Cathedral is the largest of the buildings and it dominates the square. It was completed in 1852. Very impressive on the outside, but a little plain on the inside! The Palace of the Council State is on the eastern side of the square. This originally served as the seat of the Senate of Finland, but now houses the offices of the Prime Minister and cabinet. The main university building and the national library also decorate the square. In the centre of the square is an impressive statue of Alexander II. The Seanate Square now hosts all sorts of festivals and concerts and while we there, it was full of a wide range of Chevrolet cars, celebrating the 100th anniversary of Chevrolet.

We found a great little cafe/chocolate shop just near the square, where we had some delicious chocolates and a cup of hot chocolate. When we came out of the cafe again, the thick grey cloud had almost completely cleared away, leaving a beautiful sunny blue sky and it was quite hot. This made for some good photo-taking conditions! Megan acquired a helium balloon from the good folks of Chevrolet, which she carried around for most of the afternoon. It was her birthday after all!

We had a late lunch at Bakers Bar and Restaurant, just across the road from our hotel before we carried on exploring the city centre. We thought about going to a traditional Finnish sauna, which are apparently really good, but this would have involved getting a tram across the city in rush hour, so we decided to just walk the streets instead. The blocks in the city centre are each named after an animal and they have little animal symbols above the street signs, which we quite enjoyed.

It was a lovely evening and we had a couple of drinks before heading out for dinner to a place called Ravintola Juuri (or something similar). It was amazing food - they do "sapas", like tapas but a Finnish equivalent. Megan sampled a few different sapas and Tim had wild boar and then we shared chocolate cake for dessert. So good.

Saturday

We slept in again, which was necessary after some rude drunk people woke us (and the rest of the hotel) up at 4am, shouting down the corridors. Not impressed. After checking out of the hotel, we had a good solid breakfast at the Helsinki World Trade Centre, and then went next door to the Ateneum Art Gallery, where there was an exhibition on the magic of Lapland. There were photos, paintings, sculptures etc, all inspired by Lapland. It was really good.

We walked across the city centre, past the main railway station, to the "rock church". The Temppeliaukio Church is a Lutheran church, which opened in 1969. It is better known as the rock church, as it made almost completely out of rock. The interior was excavated and built into rock, but is bathed in natural light entering through the glazed dome. We thought it was quite cool - definitely a bit different, which is always good when you have seen about a thousand churches. Sadly it was absolutely packed with American and Japanese tourists, piling off their tour buses. Old American women yelling across a church to each other is never ideal, but it is made worse when the content of the conversation is something along the lines of:

- June...June....June, where's Dorothy?
- What?
- Where's Dorothy?
- Oh I don't know. I haven't seen her.
- Oh, you haven't seen her? Wow. She was outside a minute ago, but now I can't find her...

And so on like that for several minutes. Outside the rock church, we grabbed a coke at Santa's Minimarket - not sure if it is actually owned and operated by the big man himself, but it was an excellent store and quite close to the North Pole, so the chances are good.

We had lunch in the cafe at the National Museum of Finland before we set about exploring the museum itself. It was quite a good museum, tracing Finland from pre-history through to modern times. There was a lot of stuff on the 16-19th centuries, when Finland was ruled by Sweden and Russia and then eventually gained independence.

We then had to dodge a brief rain shower before heading back to the hotel to collect our bags, via the Finnish parliament building and the supermarket to get some supplies. We then caught a taxi down to the ferry terminal for our 6.30pm ferry to Estonia. Surprisingly, there was no passport check or border control at all, so no stamp action for the passport. Disappointing.

The ferry (the Baltic Princess) was brilliant, but it was a very bizarre experience. About 95% of the ferry passengers seemed to be staying on the ferry overnight. It appeared that they had made the journey to Estonia as nothing more than a big Saturday night, instead of going to the pub. People got all glammed up in their cabins and then came down to the bar/restaurant area and proceeded to get absolutely hammered. There were people of all ages (right up to about 70) who were staggering all over the boat, often with a couple of drinks in their hands... When we arrived in Tallinn, us and about 20 others got off the ferry and everyone else carried on partying. Crazy Finns.

Birthday
girl

Uspenski
Cathedral

Megs in Senate
Square, with
Alexander II

Birthday
balloon

Helsinki
Cathedral

View from
waterfront

Mermaid
statue

Gardens

The
giraffe
block

Helsinki
railway
station

The rock
church

Inside the
rock church -
where is
Dorothy??

Amusing clock
in National
Museum

Finland
parliament
building

Helsinki
Cathedral

Romania

Saturday

Our journey from Varna, Bulgaria to Brasov, Romania involved a bus-taxi-train combo. Our very friendly and helpful taxi driver who brought us across the border into Romania, risking life and limb amongst the terrible Romanian drivers, dropped us off at the Gare de Nord in Bucharest. We bought tickets on the train to Brasov and the three-hour train ride was smooth and without major incident, although there was a box full of live chickens on our carriage. Awesome.

Romania is a country in south-eastern Europe, on the Lower Danube River, bordering Hungary and Serbia to the west, Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine and Moldova to the north and east and the Black Sea coast to the east. Its population is 22 million and its capital and largest city is Bucharest with around 2 million people. Brasov is a city in the centre of Romania, about 166km north of Bucharest, in the region of Transylvania (vampire territory!!!). Brasov's population is around 300,000 people.

We arrived in Brasov around 8pm and we got a taxi into the centre of the old town, where we had booked four nights' accommodation at a place called Guesthouse Gina. This turned out to be a disaster. We were greeted by a locked door, so we phoned Gina and she made us wait 10 minutes before she turned up and informed us that we were a massive inconvenience to her, as she had been waiting all day for us to arrive, despite the email we sent her that said we would arrive about 8.30pm.

It got worse, as Gina (a crazy lady, with dozens of cats roaming her residence and bodies in her freezer, no doubt) told us that her regular guesthouse (the one we had booked weeks earlier) was fully booked and we would have to walk with our heavy packs through town a few blocks to an alternative residence. The alternative residence was shit. It had a shared bathroom, which was under several inches of water, and the most terrible bed we have ever encountered. It leaned more than the tower in Pisa and creaked incredibly every time we moved. We reluctantly stayed the first night in this place and checked out first thing in the morning. Despite that, the old town of Brasov looked brilliant. We had dinner on the main street of the old town at a great restaurant, and there were hundreds of people milling about and a really good atmosphere around town - live bands, buskers, even a clown! It was really fun.

Sunday

As above, we could not wait to check out on Sunday morning. The terrible place we stayed had been made worse by the fact that Megs was sick in the night and felt awful on Sunday morning. We took our packs and wandered the main street about 100m or so, where we found a brilliant hotel (Hotel Coroana), which was only £4 a night more expensive than Gina's garage. Get this, it was a clean, comfortable room with a massive bed and our own bathroom, not to mention free internet (PC) and Wi-Fi in the lobby! We checked in there, had showers, and Megan collapsed in the bed for the rest of the day.

Tim ventured out and wandered the gorgeous streets of the medieval old town of Brasov, snapping photos as he went. It was a stunning day - hot and sunny, probably about 28 degrees or so. Brasov is a city full of beautiful medieval buildings and plenty of bars, cafes, restaurants, ice cream shops, market stalls and all things fun. It also has an insanely high number of ATMs in such a confined place. Tim popped back to the hotel with water, lemonade and snacks for Megs, who was not feeling any better and just wanted to rest. So Tim headed off again and found a pub to watch the Belgian Grand Prix, a fabulous race that Sebastian Vettel dominated and won comfortably, which made Tim happy. Even better, 500ml beers in this pub cost just 4 lei (80 pence)!

Tim stumbled back into the hotel room a few hours later and we both watched Manchester United thrash a sorry looking Arsenal 8-2 in the premier league...the Gunners' worst defeat since 1896. Ouch. For dinner, Megs could only manage a McDonald's sundae with no sauce, and Tim went to the same place we had gone the night before, for a delicious by rather lonely steak and chips.

Monday

Monday dawned another superb day, with blue sky and sunshine all round. Megs felt a bit better, so we went out exploring the old town together. We had breakfast of pancakes and orange juice at a nice cafe on the main street and then wandered down to the main town square, Piata Sfatului. We visited the Tourist Information Office, where the girl was about as helpful as a frog in your trousers. We took a map and worked things out on our own.

We decided to visit the Black Church, a massive Lutheran church close to the main square, one of Brasov's main tourist attractions. The church was originally a Roman-Catholic chuch, known as the Church of St Mary. It was constructed in the late 14th century, although Catholic services were eventually replaced by Lutheran ones during the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century. A fire in 1689 partially destroyed the church, after which it became known as the Black Church. We thought the outside of the church was quite impressive, although the inside was a massive disappointment. Apparently Lutheran churches are as boring as they come. The only highlight was a brilliant painted carving of some saint playing "Smell my Finger" with an angel (see photo below). This made our day and we breached the no-photo policy to bring all of you fans a little ray of light during your working day!

We had lunch at a great cafe called the Come Back German Bakery (weird name, but delicious sandwiches and chocolate fudge). Interestingly enough, we did come back...several times in fact during the remainder of our stay. Perhaps a smart marketing ploy. In the afternoon, we walked across the old town to the cable car, a rickety old car made in Italy sometime before WWII by the look of it, which amazingly got us to the top of Mt Tampa, the huge mountain that dwarfs Brasov, the one with the cheesy Hollywood-style "BRASOV" lettering on the side of it.

The views from the top were quite spectacular. We could see all of the old town below us and the newer parts of Brasov, with hundreds of communist-looking apartment blocks beyond that, and then massive wide-open plains and distant mountains. After a spot of shopping and a bit of a rest, we joined a two-hour walking tour at 6pm, which was very enjoyable.

We learned about the history of the city of Brasov, some interesting tales about the Black Church and various other famous buldings of the old town and we got a great look at the impressive town walls and forticiations, which remain largely intact today! We especially liked Rope Street, the narrowest street in the city, only a touch over a metre wide. This street was apparently constructed by the local fire brigade centuries ago, to allow them to carry buckets of water from the fire station to the town centre to fight fires...no wonder the church burnt down!

The tour also took us to a suburb of Brasov, outside the town walls, called Schei. This is where the Romanians used to live during the era of occupation of the old town by Germans and Hungarians, all those centuries ago. Here we saw the beautiful St Nicholas Romanian Orthodox church (picture below).

After the tour ended, we had dinner at a fantastic place called Restaurant Transilvania, a few blocks behind the main street. This place specialises in traditional Romanian food and it mainly frequented by locals, rather than tourists. The food was beautiful and insanely cheap. We felt bad that they charged so little for such good food. Seriously, our dinner of starters, mains and a couple of drinks each came to £14. We shared an ice-cream for dessert at Ice-cream Land on the way home. You grab a cup and build your own ice-cream, mixing which flavours you like and adding whatever toppings tickle your fancy. Nice. Awesome day in Transylvania. 10 out of 10.

Tuesday

We woke and got going a bit earlier on Tuesday morning. We had a delicious breakfast at the Come Back German bakery and then caught a taxi to "Bus Station Number 2", where we arrived just in the nick of time to catch the once-hourly bus to Bran. A half-hour bus ride later, we arrived outside the famous Bran Castle, the castle supposedly lived in by Count Dracula!

There were swarms of tourists all around the castle and there were also literally dozens of souvenir stalls, all selling tacky vampire-related goods. The castle, however, could not have been further from our pre-conceived ideas of Dracula's castle. It was decorated with beautiful furniture from the 19th and early 20th centuries, which had been used by the Romanian royal family, who had lived in the castle in that time. So, the castle had quite a homely, comfortable feel to it, despite its small and pokey nature. We especially loved the "secret staircase", which led to the music room and library.

We took plenty of photos and bought a fridge magnet, before leaving Bran behind and returning to Brasov, where we had lunch at the Come Back German bakery. It was really good! We had a very relaxing afternoon, sitting in the sun in the main square, watching people wander by. After a spot of travel admin (booking transport and planning things for future countries to be visited) we went to the snooker hall next to our hotel and played some pool. It was the usual mixed bag, some brilliant and some awful shots!

We had dinner at the same restaurant as the previous night, the Restaurant Transilvania. It was, once again, superb food and extremely cheap.

Wednesday

We had a bit of a sleep-in on Wedneasday morning and then grabbed some breakfast and wandered about the old town. It was a very slow-paced morning! We walked to Schei, the suburb outside the town walls, where we had been on the walking tour. This time we went inside the St Nicholas Romanian Orthodox church, which was very pretty. We love how well decorated the Orthodox churches tend to be. Sadly the school next to the church was closed so we could not look inside that.

We walked back into the centre of Brasov, where we visited the Museum of History. It is housed in the impressive Town Hall building, which dates from 1420! Sadly the museum was pretty average. There were some interesting things on display, but the information in English was missing in places and difficult to understand in other places. There was no logical order to the displays - it seemed to flick back and forth in time a lot. The museum staff also followed us around and watched us as we walked through the museum, which was a little off-putting.

We managed to keep a close eye on the "Transfer Deadline Day" information (Arsenal made a few good and much needed signings on the final day), thanks to the widely available free Wi-Fi throughout the old town. Later in the afternoon, we bought train tickets from Brasov to Bucharest for the following morning, and then visited a shopping mall on the outskirts of the old town, where we picked up some snacks for the big day of travel ahead.

We rounded out the day with a few beers in a bar near our hotel and then we had a delicious dinner at a restaurant called Prato - mushroom risotto for Megan and spaghetti carbonara for Tim. Solid.

Thursday

Thursday was a big day of travel, but also a very exciting day for Megan. We had a sleep in and leisurely packed our things and got sorted in the morning, before catching the 12.50pm train to Bucharest. The three-hour train ride was fine and before we knew it, we were back at the lovely Gare de Nord train station in Romania's capital. Here we switched to an airport train, which took us to the airport for our flight to Helsinki, Finland.

After finding everything in Romania extremely cheap, we realised that the airport is not cheap at all. Luckily we had some Romanian lei to use up! Our flight to Helsinki left a little late at about 8.15pm and it took about 2.5 hours to get to Finland - Megan's 50th country!!! It also happened to be the day before Megan's birthday, meaning that she made it to the 50 Country Club while still 30 years old. Awesome.








Pretty
Brasov












Market
in Old
Town










Main
street,
Old Town












Pretty
houses












Hotel
Coroana












Church carving -
seriously, what
is he doing???

















Main
square










Megs on
Mount
Tampa











View of
main
square












Main
square










Crazy
guards
marching
in main
square













Town Hall
building















Rope
Street -
very
narrow









Ekata-
rina's
Gate















St Nicholas
Romanian
Orthodox
church












Bran
Castle










Inside
"Dracula's
Castle"












Tim in
Bran
Castle












Vampire
tack in
Bran
















Bear













More
pretty
buildings










Brasov
train
station

Bulgaria

Monday

On 22 August, we arrived in Varna after a 9-hour bus ride from Istanbul and we caught a taxi to our hotel, a basic but nice enough place called Hotel Colour. Our room had a TV with loads of channels, an excellent air conditioning unit, a little fridge and a good bathroom, so we were pretty happy. The young guy on reception spoke very good English and was extremely helpful.

After settling in and showering, we got a taxi down to the beach, where we had a drink and some dinner at one of the many restaurants facing on to the beach. It was a lovely warm evening and the food was pretty good.

Bulgaria is a country in south-east Europe, which borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west and Greece and Turkey to the south. The Black Sea runs along the eastern side of the country. The capital and largest city is Sofia, the official language is Bulgarian and the population is roughly 7.5 million people. Varna is the third largest city in Bulgaria and the largest city and seaside resort on the Black Sea coast, with around 350,000 people.

Tuesday

After a big and much needed sleep in, we got sorted and headed out to get some breakfast. We found a great little bakery near our hotel, where we got a massive slice of pizza and some fresh bread (the food in Bulgaria is delicious, but rather bread and meat based). We carried on in to the town centre, stopping in at the brilliantly named "Dormition of the Theotokos Cathedral". The cathedral is a beautiful building that dominates the city centre with its onion-like domes shimmering in the sunlight. It is a Bulgarian Orthodox church and it is decorated majestically inside too. We also visited the tourist information centre, where we discussed options for travelling to Romania, and then we walked through town to the beach.

It was a beautiful hot sunny day (about 28 to 30 degrees) and the sand and sea looked amazing. We hired some beach loungers and an umbrella and pretty much did not move again for six hours. We had a short break for lunch at one of the beach restaurants, where we enjoyed a large beer for about 80 pence, meatballs and fries for Tim and a shrimp salad (with a lack of salad) for Megan. The beach was full of very, very tanned people - the women almost all topless, the men largely pot-bellied. There was also a lot of beach volleyball going on - it appeared to be a big sport in Bulgaria and there were plenty of energetic young Bulgarians keen to play.

In the evening we headed back to the hotel for showers before venturing into town for dinner at a great place called Happy Bar and Grill, which does all sorts of grilled meat, burgers and even sushi! Megan was delighted to be reunited with sushi again and Tim opted for grilled chicken and fries. On the way back to the hotel, we got an ice-cream for dessert. We enjoyed wandering through town, looking at all the crazy Bulgarian writing on signs (they use the Cyrillic alphabet).

Wednesday

A familiar pattern began to emerge during our stay in Bulgaria. We had another sleep-in, left the hotel and got breakfast from the little bakery near our hotel. This time, however, we took a detour by taxi to the main bus station to book tickets to Romania. The taxi driver was a complete loser (it seemed there were two types of taxi drivers in Bulgaria - the nice, honest sort and the complete arsehole sort) and it seemed to be a 50-50 chance as to which sort we got.

On this occasion the guy tried to rip us off massively. We had a two-minute taxi ride that was about 1.5km long. This should have cost something like 2-3 leva and the guy tried to charge 10 leva. Megs went to town on him, telling him exactly what she thought of him and that he had let his country down. We gave him 5 leva and Megs slammed his door so hard it nearly fell off. Quite amusing.

Getting information at the bus station was like trying to get blood out of a stone. As we had discovered in Istanbul, certain travel agents are affiliated to only one or two bus companies, which travel only to one or two destinations. As we cannot read Bulgarian too well, we had to visit each of the 50-odd travel agent offices at the bus station and ask if they travel to Romania. None of them did. They would all shake their head and point to the next office, where someone would then do the same. Eventually after about half an hour, we managed to buy bus tickets to Ruse, which is a Bulgarian city pretty much on the Romanian border only 75km from Bucharest. We were told we could then change buses at Ruse and travel into Romania. So we settled for that, bought tickets to Ruse for Saturday and then got a taxi to the beach.

The rest of the day was spent at the beach, lazing in the perfect sun and occasionally drinking a large, cold and extremely cheap beer. We again had lunch at a beach restaurant to break up the monotony of lying in the sun (te he he). The evening was a replica of the day before...left the beach around 6pm, showered and changed and walked to town to have a delicious dinner at Happy Bar and Grill. We love Bulgaria!

Thursday

On Thursday morning we surprisingly got breakfast from the little bakery near our hotel, but then we mixed things up completely, by negotiating a taxi ride 18km out of Varna to the west to visit the strange natural phenomenon that is the Stone Forest. Our taxi driver drove us there and back and waited for 20 minutes while we looked around (total trip of an hour) and charged us 40 leva (which shows how ridiculous the guy from the day before had been trying to get 10 leva out of us)!

The Stone Forest (known as Pobiti Kamani) consists of several groups of rock formations on a total area of 70 sq km. The formations are mainly stone columns around 5 to 7 metres high and ranging from 0.3 to 3 metres thick. The stones are believed to have been created from coral activity under the sea and are thought to be over 50 million years old. Woah! We enjoyed checking out the rocks and taking some photos, although it was pretty hot out there. Our taxi driver dropped us back in Varna at the beach and normal service resumed - rest of day was spent lying on the beach, paddling in the sea a little and eating and drinking delicious cheap food and drink.

In the evening, Megs was not feeling very well, so she had a rest at the hotel while Tim found an internet cafe and did a bit of blogging and picked up some takeaway pizza for dinner. As had been the case in Istanbul too, there were a lot of stray cats roaming the streets of Varna. Varna looked quite poor and run down in parts, which is not entirely surprising. There were a lot of big apartment blocks that looked really shabby. But the city centre and the shops and restaurants etc looked very clean and well kept.

Friday

Our last full day in Bulgaria was fairly predictable. We picked up some breakfast on our way into town and we checked out a few shops and some different streets we had not seen yet. We returned to the internet cafe and finished off some blogging and caught up with what was happening in the world. The internet was crazily cheap. We also got some stamps and sent a couple of postcards to NZ and Megan got the obligatory fridge magnet to add to her collection!

Then it was down to the beach for our last day of bliss. Actually it was a little windy at the beach on Friday. Still hot and sunny, but the water was a little rough. On the way home from the beach in the evening, we stopped in at a great little cafe where we had delcious cakes and chocolate milkshakes. Then we chilled out at the hotel, packed up all of our things, and then went out for some dinner. Dinner was a little disappointing (we tried a different place and it was below average - should have stuck with Happy Bar and Grill).

Saturday

On Saturday morning, we headed to the bus station and caught our bus to Ruse, in the north of Bulgaria. The three hour bus ride raced by and was very comfortable. But when we arrived at Ruse, we were told there were no more buses to Romania at all that day. It turned out the only way to get to Romania was by taxi. We negotiated a 50 euro taxi ride from Ruse to Bucharest, which was quite reasonable. Despite being just 75km away, it took almost two hours due to the border crossing and a toll bridge with long queues.

The taxi driver was really nice and dropped us off in Bucharest at the Gare de Nord train station. He commented as we were crossing the border that Romanians are terrible drivers and also bad people. He got the first bit right - we saw three crashes while driving through Bucharest! We really enjoyed our time in Bulgaria. It was fantastic to have a few days of chilling out in one place after a lot of travelling around. Next up, Romania!









Our
hotel















Varna
Cathedral












Megs
in town
centre












Crusader
statue











Crazy
dragon
statue











Awesome
beach













Pirate
ship










Megs on
the
beach












Tim
and
cheap
beer






































Varna
theatre













Varna
Cathedral
by night










Stone
Forest






















































Cake
and
shakes












Lovely
Varna











Bear