The Ticks
- The region has certainly picked up on a couple of Scandinavia's good habits. Namely beer and coffee
- Lithuanian rye bread is my new favourite bread and will take some beating
- The epic mountain-like cats and dogs of Sigulda
- A mysterious chocolate brownie smell in Riga that we tried to follow but could never find the source of
- Tallinn sunshine that was a godsend
- The Riga markets that fill four old Zeppelin hangars and sell all of your grocery needs, plus a bit more, and all super fresh. We also fluked getting a bottle of birch tree sap whilst it was in season - this is stuff that the Japanese pay $100 a bottle for due to its supposed health benefits
- The first red squirrel of Spring!
The Crosses
No other cross comes close to what we endured below.
In Tallinn we had the privilege of staying in a classy little establishment called Tallinn Centre Hotel. A place where the shower drains constantly smelled like someone had laid a turd in them. But that wasn't the worst of our problems there.
For three nights we were stuck in a €14 per night sweaty little cupboard space that looked out onto the sex holiday of a pair of Russians. Their general routine went something like this: argue, mate, devour a cigarette out on the balcony that our room looked out onto whilst she was in a sexy short pink nightie and him boxers with a tight shirt that exposed his due in six weeks gut, toilet break, another cigarette and then repeat.
We are very lucky people.
The Food
Lithuanian food helped to pull us out of our post-Spain food depression. Bread chips and the pig's ear that we had at Busi Trecias had us begging for more.
The Drink
Craft beer and the beers by the Estonian brewer Öllenaut win this one. Any brewer from the more well known craft brewing hot spots around the world would be happy producing beers of this quality. The Wahtula in particular was a favourite.
The standing of Öllenaut's beers on RateBeer are unjustifiably low in my opinion. They're not American and they're not by Mikkeller but that doesn't mean that they're not any good. Get your hands on these beers!
