Some highlights of our ride from Riga to Tallinn:
- We had lunch in a town themed for Baron Munchausen (because the actual baron’s wife was from here?)
- We camped at a really nice free campsite on the coast just after we crossed into Estonia
- We met a guy who had ridden from Tallinn and had nothing good to say about the route. It made us a little worried, but he must have gone a different way because our trip was amazing
- We met a pair of older Polish bike tourists who were pretty much following our route all the way to Stockholm. They were kinda our older Polish doppelgangers – one was even named Grzegorz!
- We used the train cheat to get into Tallinn, which is yet another really cool old city with a well-preserved old town. We ended up in a tourist-trap bar in a dungeon where a bar-maid served flagons of ale and “cats and dogs pies”
- The next day, we took the ferry to Helsinki, which turned out to be a full-on cruise ship with like 4 bars, three restaurants, and live music. It was full of Finns with trolleys full of booze (turns out the cheap drinks trend was about to end)
- We arrived in Helsinki in the afternoon and had a good time roaming around the city.
- We met up with Alice and her friend Christine for brunch the next morning.
- After a quick stop at a bike shop for Zach, three of us took a ferry to Suomenlinna , a historic island with a fort and boatyard
- We then rolled out of Helsinki – pretty much all cycle paths for over 30 miles! We ended up finding a really great camping spot in a park in the burbs on some smooth rocks
