Much better

Tere everyone! (Hi). Well things are much better now. After I last wrote, Deanna and I got breakfast at the grocery store and paid the kid outside playing the accordion 20 SEK and listened to the one and only song he knows while we ate.

We hopped on the subway and went back to old town where I bought a beautiful pair of earrings made of bloodstone and a really cool ring. We also went to a chocolate shop and had a chocopreso (pure concentrated hot chocolate) and an assortment of chocolates. That always makes things better.

We met back at the hostel at 4pm and made a long walk in the heat with our packs to the harbour to get on our giant cruise ship. I was not expecting such a big and fancy boat for 70 dollars canadian. What a great night we had!

We got on a 6pm and had a beer on the sun deck as we sailed through the 24,000 islands of Sweden. It was perfect weather. An awesome 2-man band played terrific music. We tried to go for supper but we were supposed to make reservations and so we were forced to eat microwaved pizza. Probably the only bad part of the cruise.

After supper we showered and got dressed up and hit the show lounge and the other bars and pubs on the boat. We sat down with some Estonian guys who turned out to be 30-somethings with wives and kids. Creepy. Anyways, we ended the night dancing and fell into bed around 3 am. The shipped docked at 10 am and we had a fairly lengthy walk to the hostel.

The hostel is right in old town and has free internet and sheets - score! We are all together in a room plus two Australian guys :) We spent the afternoon wandering around and I bought some hand-made wood things. Mom there are tons of linen shops and needle work. We also walked into a stained-glass workshop.

Tallin is a city of 400,000 so it is very quaint. So far I really like it. AND most everything is the same price as Canada. Whew!

We went to the House of Beer when we first got here as well. Most restaurants have waiters and waitresses dressed in period costumes from the middle ages and this place was no exception. I had some buffalo wings and a coke but the boys had a giant beer of course. Donny had wild boar and potato dumpling which looked amazing!

Not really sure what the plan is for tonight. Everyone is back in the room resting a bit. The weather is perfect, not too hot, not too cold. I am a happy camper again!