The travels of Tim and Megan

Monday, September 12, 2011

Tallinn, Estonia

Saturday

We were pretty glad to get off the ferry in Tallinn and leave the crazy Finns to get on with their drinking. We had a little trouble finding our hotel. We knew it was pretty much right next to the ferry terminal, but it was well hidden and we wandered around in the dark for a while before tracking it down. It was a great place to stay, though. Good location close to the Old Town and our room was really nice. We were happy to be in Estonia!

Estonia is a country in the Baltic region of northern Europe. It is bordered by Latvia to the south, Russia to the east and has the Baltic Sea to the west and the Gulf of Finland to the north. The population of Estonia is just 1.35 million, making it one of the least populous members of the European Union. Tallinn is the capital and largest city, with a population of around 415,000. Tallinn is also the European Capital of Culture for 2011!

Sunday

After a bit of a sleep in, we had a fairly typical breakfast buffet at the hotel - bread, fruit and yoghurt, sausages, baked beans, juice. Excellent. We then set off to explore the old town of Tallinn. We had heard from a number of people that Tallinn was beautiful, but it was even more spectacular than we had imagined. The morning was cloudy and drizzly, but by afternoon the sky was blue and the sun was shining.

We wandered through the cobble stone streets, admiring the colourful and pretty medieval buildings and checking out some of the souvenir stores. There was plenty of amber for sale, as it is abundant in the Baltic States, as well as lots of Russian dolls, jewellery, wool and linen products and other crafts. We found the Tourist Information Centre and got some info on various tours and then we had a drink at one of the cafes in the beautiful Town Hall square (main square). The sun was shining by this stage and it was actually quite hot. We watched the waiters and waitresses rushing up to tourists in the square, trying to entice them into their cafes.

We continued to explore the old town, checking out shops, churches and the fortification towers and walls, which are still largely intact, and we made our way up to the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, a picturesque Russian Orthodox church opposite the Estonian parliament building, which is pink of all colours! We had awesome pizza for lunch at a nice restaurant on Viru Street in the centre of the old town and then ventured outside of the old town walls (to the new town, we suppose) to check out one of the huge department stores and use the internet.

Later in the afternoon, we walked back around the edge of the old town to our hotel via the Alkoholopood, where we picked up some exceptionally cheap beer and cider as well as some snacks, which we consumed while watching some of the Athletics World Champs in our hotel room. We can now confirm that the sport of hammer throw is a ridiculous one. We also managed to book ourselves a bus from Tallinn to Vilnius, Lithuania for just 20 euros each. Bargain!

In the evening we walked back into the old town and found a great little restaurant where we both had a delicious chicken and rice dish. After dinner we went for a walk through the old town. It was so pretty all lit up at night. It was a nice still evening, although a bit chilly after dark.

Monday

Tim got up early and trekked across the other side of the old town to do some laundry at the laundromat. The women working there spoke no English, so there was a rather hilarious mime session and much pointing by Tim and one of the women to convey that we indeed wanted all of clothes both washed and dried. With chores out of the way, we discovered a brilliant market just across the road from our hotel - the Sadama market. It sold literally everything you could imagine short of livestock.

It was a stunning day - hot, sunny, perfect blue sky. We loved Tallinn even more! We wandered into the old town, past the Fat Margaret Tower, a huge round tower that was once part of the town wall fortifications. You can see from the photo below just how big it is. It has become one of the icons of Tallinn and you can buy all sorts of souvenirs relating to the tower.

On our morning walk we stumbled across a lovely little square, beneath St Nicholas Church, that had sun loungers scattered all over it, so we lay in some sun loungers for a while, thinking about how much better that was than working. We joined a walking tour of the old town from 12-2pm. It was really well done. The tour guide was excellent and he gave us so many interesting facts and figures and he told us a few stories (both fact and myth) about Tallinn and Estonia. We visited the Estonian War of Independence Victory Column, a few of the main churches, some lookout platforms on the higher part of the old town with stunning views and the town walls and fortification towers. The walking tour was superb.

We had lunch at a fantastic Texan restaurant called Honky Tonk Canteen. It had all sorts of delicious American food (massive servings as you would expect) and was quite cheap too. After lunch, we pretty much rolled through the old town with packed stomachs, enjoying the hot weather and the beautiful surroundings. The town was over-run with Northern Ireland football supports (Northern Ireland were playing Estonia in a Euro 2012 qualifier match on the Tuesday night and a big contingent had made the journey to eastern Europe for a long (and thirsty) weekend). A large group of them hung about in an Irish pub in the main square all day Monday, singing and chanting. It kind of ruined the tranquil atmosphere of Tallinn's town centre, but was also quite amusing.

We were inspired by the Irish and decided to check out a few of Tallinn's pubs in a mini pub crawl of our own. In truth, we actually only made it to two pubs - the Drink Bar and Hell Hunt. Hell Hunt is actually the Estonian translation for Gentle Wolf, and it has an interesting logo of a large wolf carrying a naked lady on its back... It was the first Estonian pub registered after Estonia regained independence in 1991. It was nice to relax with a few beers after a lot of walking and exploring over the past few days.

We rounded out the day with an awesome dinner at a place called Porgu. Megan had salmon and Tim had a pork chop. They had ridiculously heavy chairs - like about 50kg each. There was no way of stealing those bad boys. It was a bit of a struggle to get up the steps out of the restaurant after dinner as it was. Another solid day in Estonia!

Tuesday

We had a sleep in and then breakfast in the hotel on Tuesday. It was a grey morning, with patches of drizzle. Not ideal. After breakfast we made our way to Hotel Viru for the 11.30am KGB tour. The KGB used to have the top floor of the hotel to themselves, where they had offices and spy equipment stored to allow them to keep tabs on any foreign hotel guests during the Soviet Occupation era. The tour was really well presented. It was crazy to believe that the extreme lengths the KGB went to in order to spy on pretty ordinary people, and that this occurred up until the late 1980s! Our tour guide, who cannot have been much older than us, vivdly remembers getting training in putting on a gas mask (in case of some attack) when she was at school as a 5 or 6 year old!

It had started pouring while we were in the hotel tour. It had improved slightly by the time our tour ended, so it was only drizzling, as we walked from the Hotel Viru back in to the old town. We headed for the main square, where we visited the Raeapteek pharmacy. This is the oldest continuously functioning pharmacy in the world. Records show that it was in operation as early as 1422, but it was probably earlier than that. It has been passed down through the generation of the same family for centuries. It is now part modern day pharmacy and part museum of weird and wonderful things that it used to sell back in the Middle Ages - including herbs, snake skins, toads, insects, a mummified human hand and deer penises to name but a few. Very strange place.

Just along from the pharmacy, we found a great little cafe that had an amazing assortment of cakes, so we popped in there to dodge some rain and we got a piece of cake each and a hot chocolate for Tim and a tea for Megan. Delicious! We then visited a Russian flea market down behind the railway station. It was actually quite crap and the rain was still falling, so we abandoned that fairly quickly and headed for the hotel.

We managed to get on the computer in the lobby of the hotel next to ours without any complaints from management. It appeared to be the only computer in Estonia with a functioning USB port, so we could download photos and do some blog! We also decided to use the pool and spa complex of the hotel next door. We got 90 minutes in the indoor swimming pool, spas and saunas for an excellent price. Great way to spend a wet afternoon. After some wine and snacks in our hotel room, we had dinner at our favourite Texan restarant, the Honky Tonk Canteen. Again, it was excellent. Again, we walked home very full. It was quite a nice evening. The rain and cloud had cleared away and we were hopeful of a cracking day on Wednesday.

Wednesday

Sure enough, Wednesday morning was bright and sunny, although there was a bit of breeze about. After breakfast and checking out of the hotel, we caught a public bus from central Tallinn out to a suburb called Pirita. Pirita is a lovely area on the coast, with a white sandy beach and a nice little marina with dozens of yachts and a view back to the old town of Tallinn. We walked through a small forest of pine trees and then along the beach to the marina. There was not a lot happening in Pirita, so after our walk we caught the bus back into the city - bus was full and not pleasant smelling.

Back in the old town we walked to St Olav's Church. The church was built in the 12th century and by the 15th century, the church was 159 metres tall. The motivation for such a massive steeple must have been as a maritime post, to make the trading city of Tallinn visible from far out at sea. Between 1549 and 1625, the church was the tallest building in the world. After several lightning strikes, the height was reduced and it is now around 123 metres tall. We climbed the steep steps of the tower up to the viewing platform, where got breath-taking views of Tallinn's old town and out to sea. The interior of the church itself was actually quite plain and boring - another Lutheran church!

We grabbed some lunch at Hell Hunt (solid club sandwich and salad) and in the afternoon we visited the Museum of Occupation, which depicted in graphic detail the terrifying occupations of Estonia by Nazi Germany during WWII and then by the Soviet Union, the latter lasting right up until the early '90s. The museum was brilliant - loads of information and we wished we had more time there. But, as we had an overnight bus to catch, we had to move on. We had dinner at our favourite restaurant in Tallinn - the Honky Tonk Canteen and then we grabbed our luggage from the hotel and made our way to the bus station.

Our bus left Tallinn at 10.30pm and arrived in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, at 6.40am on Thursday, passing through Latvia on the way. The bus was comfortable and we managed to get a decent enough sleep. Strangely there were no border checkpoints at all, which made for a better sleep but also meant we got no Baltic stamp action in our passports.

Town
Hall
Square

Tim and the
chimney
sweeper statue

St
Nicholas
Church

War of
Independence
Victory Column

Beautiful
Tallinn

Ditto

St Olav's
Church

Megs by
town walls

View
over
old
town

Another
pretty
church

Estonia
parliament
building

Alexander
Nevsky
Cathedral

Hell
Hunt
pub

Pub
crawl

Megs on
KGB
tour

View
from
St Olav's
tower

Megs
hugging
Fat Margaret
tower

Statue in
the park

Prison
doors in
Museum of
Occu-
pation

Tim and
a bear

Friday, September 9, 2011

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

Monday, September 5, 2011

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.