Our next stop was quaint. I suppose it still is quaint. Very quaint. Tallinn was quaint. Tallinn still is quaint, if fact. At least the old part of town is.

The last morning in Helsinki it was raining as we boarded another ferry to take us over to Tallinn, a relatively short 2.5 hour ride across a skinny section of the Baltic Sea. Arriving at port, the skyline was a complete departure from that of Helsinki.

The most prominent features are several green/black-roofed spires that belong to churches and the town hall, dating from 1402. Apparently it's the only intact Gothic style townhall in Northern Europe.

We hopped in a cab after scurrying around to find a pay-phone to call the George, the manager for the apartment we rented. The cabbie dropped us off at the address we had but there was absolutely nothing to tell us where to go from that point on. Turns out the apartment was through a tiny door, down a tunnel, around a corner and up three flights of stairs. 

Finnish things are hard to say. The name of this place is no different. At least it's phonetic. I digress... One of the days while in Helsinki, we took a day-trip out to sea for a change. The destination: Suomenlinna, a 18th century fortress built by the Swedes to protect their empire from the Russians. It's huge, insanely intricate and pretty much impenetrable. It was and still is inhabited and I think about 200 people live there year-round.

In Helsinki, we spent about five nights in one of the coolest hotels I've ever seen and as such, I decided it needed its own post. It was the Hotel Glo, and the building itself is the former Student Union building for the Technology University of Helsinki from 1903. The interior has been completely redone, however, and it is as modern and clean as you can imagine.

For 2012, Helsinki was selected as one of the World Design Capitals and aptly so. These are highlights of good design in this city and I loved every one of them.

... Continued from part 1.

The ferry was cozy to say the least. (Note to all who are reading and live in very small spaces: talk to a ship designer to figure out how to fit a four-person bedroom and bathroom into 20 sq.ft.) Though our room was small, the ship was actually pretty huge. 8 decks maybe, two levels of parking for cars, trucks and semi-trailers, something like 7 restaurants, 4 bars, a night-club, spa, shopping center, casino, arcade, and more. It was really just too vast to fully explore!... I honestly spent most of my time outside overlooking the water. After spending the night in a relatively comfortable fold-down bed listening to the perpetual hum of elevators go up and down, we arrived in Helsinki a total of 18 hours later.

Our journey began with a short flight to New York. One would normally think there would be no problem with that, especially seeing as it was the very first leg of our long trip. There was a problem... You see we typically fly stand-by, meaning we get on the plane if there are available seats after all the full-revenue passengers have boarded. There just happened to be one more of us than seats available on our scheduled Delta flight. Great! Panic is quickly induced and thoughts of never even making it to Europe come rushing to the front of our minds.

Mom is seasoned at this and has faith that we will get there, It was still a bit tense, however we ultimately do get there. She and I were on our Delta flight and my dad on a full fare American Airlines flight that left less than 30 minutes later. Such a fantastic start to our three week vacation!

Mom and I arrived at New York's LaGuardia airport and have to cab it over to JFK. Fortunately dad's plane went direct to JFK, saving him enough time to meet us and catch the most important flight, the one to Stockholm. Now, flying stand-by has funny ways of catching up with itself. It can be absolutely horrendous and strand you for days or it can be pretty good. So good in fact that this time, the three of us were upgraded to business class...! The flight went well, as you'd expect from being in the front of the plane. Lots of movies were watched, some sleeping happened and many hands of video poker were played.