Helsinki, Finland.

From the moment we arrived in Helsinki it was awesome. Yes it was a rainy mess but that was nothing that an amazing chai latte couldn't fix. We spent our days wandering around & checking out all the coolest places. I will spare the details because you & I both know that stuff is boring. Lets just say we saw a lot of sweet cathedrals, ships, stores & buildings. 

I did have a few favorite locations. The first being the silent chapel. It's basically a wooden bean in the middle of the city where people can come to think about life & stuff. I loved the idea of it & seeing people come to escape the hustle & bustle of the city. It did my heart a lot of good. Another one of my favorite locations was the rock church. It was literally nestled in a giant rock & unlike any other church I've seen while being in Europe. 

It basically rained the whole time we were there. I actually don't mind the rain but the wind kills me. It got pretty crazy. We always looked like we had just stepped out of a car wash. Our umbrellas couldn't take it & would constantly flip the opposite direction. There was absolutely nothing we could do about it. At one point Bailey & I were walking down the street, soaking wet, big backpacks on our backs, wide eyed & mouths open. This random man took one glance at us & instantly started busting up laughing. We looked psychotic.   

It got dark around four & we hopped on a ferry to find our hostel. We had booked a place out on an island called Suomenlinna. It's a sea fortress that's about twenty minutes outside of the city. From the moment we got to the island something felt weird. It's hard to explain but we definitely all felt like there were strange vibes there. Even some random strangers we met agreed that the place felt haunted. Our hostel was in an old school house which made everything even creepier. When we arrived there was no one there. They simply left the keys in an envelope for us & a letter that told us to show ourselves to our room. The whole place was empty. The weirdest part was that it still looked like a school. The only difference was that there were beds instead of desks. 



Why would you ever hang up a picture like this in a vacant hostel. Why? 

We decided to wander around the island & man it was creepy. Bailey was loosing her mind so we took her back to the hostel. Jess & I went exploring alone. We found & felt some strange stuff. Later that night we browsed through google & found that we were not alone in thinking that the island is haunted.When a worker finally arrived the next day we asked him if the island was haunted & he said "I'm not sure but this hostel is. I've seen things".  Hahaha okay. What an awesome thing to tell your guests. Moral of the story is weird things have happened there.

I could write a whole blog post about Bailey's bunk mate & how funny he was. We called him Smeagol because he was his human doppelganger. He was chatting Bailey's ear off all night & I was laughing so hard. She is a weirdo magnet & is always so kind to them. She did try to convince me to let her sleep in my bed but I'm a bad friend & insisted that she sleep by him. I took about 101 photos of the two of them interacting. 

 

When the time came we departed from Helsinki on a ferry. Although it was only a three hour ride it was ROUGH. The water was crazy & we all started getting sick. Jordan was puking his guts out & the rest of us were in a sort of coma. The only thing that made us feel better was running around the deck (which was just shy of a tornado) like the children we are. It was so liberating & we looked completely insane. I hope that someone was sitting inside laughing at us. 

& we were off to Estonia! 

Chai Latte.

Woah. I have a lot to write about. The last couple weeks have been unbelievably eventful. In an effort to maintain sanity I'm going to break this big excursion of mine into locations. I'll start with St. Petes.

We took a sleeper train to St. Petes & as always it was a delight. When we got there we went & got sconed at our usual 24 hour cafe. There were a lot of people dressed up as zombies (seeing as it was the morning after Halloween) & strange things were happening there.I save those kind of things for my journal. 

Sometimes people tell Bailey & I that we look alike & we think they are crazy. Then I see pictures like this & I kind of sort of understand. 

After breakfast we started exploring the city. The morning was even more beautiful than the one we had enjoyed there just weeks before. We revisited some of our favorite areas & popped into Starbucks every few hours to seek refuge from the cold. 

Always pretty.  

When we wandered around Winter Palace I suggested to Bailey that we do headstands. She accepted & it was hilariously awesome. I just taught her how to do them a couple weeks ago. She was a trooper for giving it a shot & eventually nailed it! I love this series of photos too much. 

One new thing that we did was explore Peter & Paul Fortress. It was beautiful but I started to turn into an ice monster because I was so cold. I was made for sunny days.This is how I usually look. 

I just don't understand. 

We revisited The Hermitage & played the funniest game with these portraits.

That evening we hopped onto a ferry. Which was more like a semi ghetto cruise ship & began our journey.