Maritime Hotel Parnu

I let the tent dry out a little after we got up. The kids had a go at archery, using one bow and six arrows. The manager supervised them for about 20 minutes, before he got bored. I could sense his growing realisation, that the arrow arcing into the ground six feet away, was likely to be the best shot of the day.

We headed for Pärnu, a pretty seaside town, ten minutes away. Nick scared the wits out of a Polish lorry driver by trying to turn the wrong way up a ...

Jöekääru Adventure Camp is not quite what it seems. Its advertising boasts of corporate facilities, an adventure park, archery, kayaking, paint-balling and a climbing wall. In reality, it is a quiet but pleasant campsite with a play area for the children. It is probably more suited to us, than the all singing, all dancing campsite it pretends to be.

To be fair, it does have at least one of each of the items it claims to have, but they are not exactly in mint ...

... first pictures in front of Kersti's house, bought some water cause all the signs showed it was going to be a hot day, and started walking towards the suburbs. First car driver, heard that we didn't take a tent for this big adventure, was kind enough to offer his tent to us. It also turned out that his mother had been given Kersti some lectures about social sciences in university. A few ...

... road number E67 / 4), which is famous for the large amount of trucks and high speeds. The road wasn't actually that bad. There were some trucks, but road shoulders were in good shape so we had no trouble cycling as they passed us by. I was more afraid while cycling near Turku in Finland on roads than on Via Tallinn. Of course, the scenery at Via Tallinn wasn't very interesting, but if the goal is to move quickly and relatively safely along the shoreline of Estonia, it's a good ...

... is a resort can only be a stretch, but Pärnu has that kind of reputation in its own country. And I would be willing to see a concert even at North Pole if necessary. So why not one of those open-air ones in Pärnu summer? Well, it wasn't to be. At least not this time around. In fact, it was all just a matter of perspective. To someone from Croatia calling a town like Pärnu a summer capital may be a contradiction ...

This blog is now finished. I will stay in Estonia for a couple of days, celebrate the weekend in Riga, and fly to Singapore on Monday. I will be living & working in Singapore for about 1-1,5 years (well, that's at least the plan), traveling around the neighboring countries. If and when I manage to create a blog about my trips around there, it will most probably reside in blogspot.com. Life goes on. Enjoy every moment.

This evening I arrived back to Pärnu! Home sweet home! Some general numbers... - 44 days (on the trip since 20.Sept. Actually, I spent 17.-18.Oct in Estonia, so the total should be 42 days) - about 70 hours of pure flight time - 6 countries (Estonia, Latvia, Germany, UK, UAE, South Africa) - 4 timezones skipped (earliest UK summertime GMT+1 ...

... us to the veue to appreciate the idea that 100,000 people had turned up, 10 percent of the whole population of the country!! We then drove to the Old Town. We have been pretty unlucky with the weather. As we arrived at the walls of the city a storm and torrential downpour occurred. We saw the Presidential palace and the beautiful Russian Orthodox church opposite. The town was packed wth tour groups. There were several Cruise ships in port for the day so we had to ...

... how great bears are the programme cut to some old woman sitting on the porch of her house in a rocking chair, double barrel shotgun in her hands and she says in a real strong hicksville American accent "the only good bear is a dead bear". We were rolling around the floor laughing at this and for the remainder of my stay that became the phrase when talking about anything, "the only good old lady is a dead old lady", and so on. Some hostels you stay in can be a bit sterile, with no charm but ...

... in a site predominated by Finnish camper-vans but a quiet night in makes a nice change from the busy Tallinn dorms. Since Bournemouth doesn't have a campsite in the town (3-1 Parnu). A lonely tent at Konse campsite Summary Parnu is much more backpacker friendly than my home beach resort of Bournemouth. But 2 days ...