Day trip to Estonia

On saturday, my host mum, host sister and host aunty went on a shopping day trip to Tallin in Estonia! It is so weird how Europe is so close to other countries that you can just go to another country for the day! It took 3 hours by boat. 

The boat was huge and was called Finlandia. On the boat was everything from duty free shopping centres to bars and restaurants to dance floors with bands and stages. 

We had a huge buffet breakfast on the way there. I was very full afterwards but it was very yummy! 

The view out the window while we were eating breakfast was gorgeous! Espicially since the sun was still rising. 

The first sight of Estonia from the boat. 

When we arrived we got in a taxi and went straight to the shops. Selma and I spent ages in Terra Nova! We found some really nice clothes and bought matching tops and tracksuit pants. We then had to wait for my host mum and host aunty to try on clothes as shown below...

I even found an angry birds onesie! I want one. 

When we were all shopped out we got in another taxi and went to the old town for lunch. One of the streets on the way there was filled with very cheap flower markets.

At the end of the street was a beautiful castle building! On the left in the building was a little tourist shop. I bought a gorgeous christmas decoration with Estonia written on it for our christmas tree. 

More really pretty streets.

More cute, little tourist shops.

Finally we made it to the lunch spot. The restaurant was very cute! It was made of wood and stone and had a fire place with a fire going at the back. 

The huge pizza I had. It was very yummy. 

After lunch we headed back and started to walk to another market place. 

On the way we passed a massive, beautiful church!

The markets were very cheap and had everything from Holister to Obey to Converse to football jerseys. I resisted the urge to buy anything as I somehow have to get everything back to Australia!

It was then time to walk back to the wharf and board the boat again to head home. On the boat on the way back we drank sprit and watched the band play. 

After the band a DJ came on and started pumping the tunes. My host mum, aunty and I grooved it out on the dance floor. 

Later on a mini mosh pitt even formed! People say the Finns are shy buy you should see them on the dance floor! I think a lot of them had, had a bit too much to drink! 

Overall it was a really fun day!

Autumn has come

It was quite a warm day today, around 12 degrees and sunny. My host mum suggested I take Topi (our dog) for a walk and get some gorgeous photos of Autumn. So I did :) These are photos from around my neighbourhood. 

My Street name. I still have trouble pronouncing it as it is so long and finnish. 

The house I live in! All the houses over here are colourful! In my street there is a green house, a pink house, a white house, a blue house and our yellow house :)

Espoo Nature Museum

Last week was my school's exam week. Since all the exams are in Finnish, I didn't have to do any but the english exam. My english exam was on a saturday which meant I got monday to friday off, so Fiona and I went touristing to the Espoo Nature Museum called Haltia. We caught a train and a bus there. It was a freezing cold day and waiting for the
busses was not at all pleasant!

We paid our 2 euro entry fee and headed off to the first exhibit. We walked through a white corrider with displays of bears, birds, snow and fish on either side. When we came to the end there was a huge map of Finland on the ground.

The map had circles which followed you wherever you walked. When you stopped at a place it would bring up all this information on the tv screens next to it about that palce. It was in english for us too! We spent at least 10 good minutes playing on this map. 

After the map there was a section of colourful wall and floor with animated fish swiming on it. I have decided Finnish people really like their fish. 

In the same room there was a huge screen displaying the 5 different seasons (spring, summer, autumn, winter, late winter). It was really beautiful and you felt like you were really in the scenery. It even had sound effects of running water and birds singing to go with it. Fiona and I sat here and watched the whole thing play through. It was really nice. 

They also had interatctive screens with all this information about the seasons. I found it really interesting as the seasons are so different to Australia. It was also in english!

A really cool igloo. 

Swans playing chess? No idea what this was about...

One of the exhibition rooms had bear tunnels for little kids to crawl through. Of course we couldn't resist and decided to crawl through them. In the middle of the tunnels there were beanbags and a little tv screen showing videos of bears. A good 10 minutes was spent here. At the end there was a real stuffed bear. Techniqually I have hugged a wild bear. 

Of course we had to write in the guest book :)

Outside there was a whole lot of stairs you could climb to a lookout. Feeling fit, we decided to climb them. 

When we got to the top there was a lovely view of the roof next door? Most pointless climb ever #whomadethislookout

At least we could look at our solar system while we caught our breath and prepared for the climb back down.