I Thought I Was An Alien.

I must interject from the vacation posts to share a few beautiful things.

1. Johnny Flynn & Anne Hathaway are starring in a film together. This is a dream come true for me. Despite popular opinion I've always been a fan of Anne Hathaway & Johnny Flynn will forever have my heart. Stoked.

2. This cheerful rendition of Lua does my nostalgic heart so much good.

Stockholm, Sweden.

Ahhh where to begin. Stockholm was my favorite place that we visited during our trip & that's saying something. I've always wanted to go to Sweden so I was extra stoked to finally make my dream a reality. It did not let me down. Stockholm gave me the best feeling. Like when you are six & you wake up on Christmas morning or when you are sitting next to a fire with your favorite person. It was just right.

As soon as we arrived in Sweden I was ready for business. Unfortunately we got a little turned around & ended up killing about an hour trying to find our hostel. We finally found it & quickly took off to explore. Oh & our hostel was located on a boat.

Lucky for me, I happen to be best friends with the girl who knows everyone..even in Sweden? So Bailey happens to have some sort of cousin named Kris in Stockholm & he volunteered to show us around. What a guy! It was awesome hanging out with him. He seriously made our experience 100x better. First of all, he had a car. I have been in a car like twice in the last three months. So we instantly felt cool when we hopped inside. As a result of this we were able to see a lot more of Stockholm. 

He also hooked us up with awesome food. For lunch we went to this delicious place where we ate traditional Swedish food. Dinner was even more awesome. We went to a Mexican place called La Neta. Those of you that know me know that I love Mexican food. I dream about a good pork salad at least once a week. Don't believe me? Ask my father who I just told to be waiting for me at the airport with Cafe Rio. It's normal. Anyways the tacos at La Neta were amazing. Even for American standards & ESPECIALLY for European standards. We were the happiest girls in all the land. Lastly he helped us pick out the best Swedish chocolate. We bought so much. Like twenty dollars each. No shame in our game. The mint kind is heaven sent I swear.

We saw Stockholm right. We walked around the most expensive areas, went to the city hall, gamla stan & some other cool places. It was just flawless. 

Swedes do this awesome thing called a fika, which is basically a coffee break where you chill out & eat something sweet. I'm all about that life, (Even though the name fika makes me feel incredibly uncomfortable). We took a fika & Kris bought us chai lattes. All was right in the world. 

We also went to institute random right? It was cool to chat with some (very attractive) Swedes & folks from America. I love that the church is the same everywhere. I also love how small the lds world is. Turns out Kris' brother served with good ol Jake Brown.So here we are with Joseph, Bailey's cousin, Jake's old companion from when they served in Finland, while in Sweden freaking out over all the people we all knew.

I love Swedes. Well at least like the twenty I had the pleasure of interacting with. They have the greatest sense of humor & are good looking & they just rock.

I'm already scheming ways I can get back there. See you soon Sweden! 

Tallinn, Estonia.

Tallinn! I am going to be completely honest in saying that I don't even think I knew that Tallinn existed until I couple months ago. WHAT A SHAME. That is one of the greatest things about the Baltic countries.. they are so underrated. No ones ever like ahh man I'm just dying to check out Latvia. BUT they should because these places rock. There is magic floating all around. Estonia was like something  straight out of a children's book. It was very much unlike anywhere I've ever been. A lot of the buildings there are suppppper old & they've done a great job at giving things that authentic feel. The old town area (where we stayed & hung out) was pretty small. So I can say in confidence that we basically hit it all. 

I fell in love with Tallinn on our first night there. Logan, Bailey & I mozied around the city for hours. It was flawless. One of those moments where you question if your reality is... well real. The weather was perfect & the cobblestone was glistening from the previous rainfall. Hardly anyone was out & all was right in the world. We made our way up to a overlook that about made me loose my mind. It was a moment too beautiful for photographs.

The next day I snapped plenty of pictures though. All the streets were so darling, I couldn't resist. Oh & Tallinn wins for having the coolest doors.

We were pretty stoked when we found Lion Bars again. Fat kid probz. 

This church creeped me out a little because all their lights looked like spines & a pelvic bones.  

One of my favorite parts about my time in Tallinn was this awesome little medieval restaurant that I can't remember the name right now. It was in the basement of this super old cathedral/building. There were only three things on the menu & it was delicious. I got the elk soup & apple pie. THAT ELK SOUP THOUGH. I raved about it for days. Heck I'm even raving about it now. They tried to keep things super legit & took a time machine approach.  Everything was lit by candles & you drank your soup without a spoon. The lady who ran the place was awesome. She would give us a hard time about everything, especially using a card to pay. We ate there multiple times. It was great.

The hostel we stayed at was called Monk's Bunks. It was rad & I really liked it. Bailey & I had a room on its own floor & it looked like a honeymoon suite. Well not really but kind of because it was covered in hearts & was super secluded. They had nice showers & overall it was a great place.

Our next ferry ride was pretty eventful. We really liked this ship because there was a lot going on! Baye & I spent two hours checking out a group of attractive men who later ALL turned out to be gay. But other than that things were nothing but peachy. This pictures depicts the pure bliss we were feeling pretty accurately. 

 Bailey lost in a game of odds &  had to walk around the ship like this. We played odds a lot on this trip & for some reason we kept loosing. We had to do some stupid things. It's the dumbest funnest game ever. Don't know what it is? Look here. Linking to urban dictionary. Is that an all time low? Either way its worth knowing about. 

Bailey & I also spent some time in the sauna & hot tub. Overall it was an wonderful experience but there was a point where we thought we were going to die in the sauna. I'm not kidding. I was having a panic attack because we put too much water on those weird stone things & I felt like I couldn't breathe. The only thing that helped was lying in fetal position & meditating. We were trying to be tough though because people do this stuff all the time & they love it! It wasn't until Bailey was convinced that her nose hairs were going to singe off that we made our big break.This is what we looked like when we came out. It was rough. 

Next stop Sweden! 

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!