From Tallinn, Estonia to St-Petersbourg, Russia

Talk about landing in a totally different world!!! Before we arrived here, we stopped for a short visit in Tallinn, Estonia. Very much like Riga except that there is a souvenir shop every 5 meter in the old town. Otherwise very beautiful. We stayed with Raigo, an Estonian who lives in an old soviet style apartment. It is difficult to imagine that a whole family used to live in that small apartment only over a decade ago when Estonia was still part of Russia. We then took an overnight bus across the Russian border (no problem but no sleep) and arrived in a Russian world! Very hard to read since everything is written in cyrillic. We got there at 6:30am when it was still dark outside and tried to find our hostel...1.5 hours later with a heavy backpack on our back, we finally found it and settled in for a well deserved nap. I (Isabelle) woke up with the start of Strep. throat infection and Nick's sinuses are still full, but we enjoyed what we've seen so far. We are staying in a pretty nice hostel name "Nord Hostel" where people speek English a little better so we are able to communicate. I guess the most dangerous threat here is water. You have to drink bottled water or boil tap water for 5 minutes if not you may catch....Giardia!! (Hey Penny, bring back memories?). Anyway, seems like we are doing okay for now, we'll let everyone know if we catch anything like that! Good conversation subject, isn't it? Anyway, sorry for the long gap between the last post and this one but it is sometime hard to find a computer. The two first photos are from Tallinn, the most right one is from the Church of the Spilled Blood in St-Petersbourg. We will stay another few days in St-Petersbourg and head to Moscow next. Cheers with a shot of Vodka!!!