During our six month stay in the Baltic countries, we found charms aplenty. But the three capitals of these countries are the jewels in the northern European crown. Though beset with war and destruction for…
Saaremaa is a roughly 70 by 40 kilometer rectangular chunk of island just off the western shore of Estonia, capping the whole Gulf of Riga. Since the 19th century, people have traveled here for the…
(The following elegy for 9/11/01 was written by our son, Erik, on the 15th anniversary of the attack on New York City. He was living there at the time. We are posting it because his…
The Finns themselves say that they can seem cold, aloof to visitors. In public, for example, their custom is to stay in their own groups. At a restaurant or the very popular buffet lunches (lounas),…
Wet and wild, a peat bog is a landscape that literally does not want to let go of you. In late August, we walked and canoed about 10 - 15 kilometers through Kuresoo, at about…
For a traveler, there is never enough time. Sure, you can see "the highlights" of a city in a few days, of a country in a week or so. But, in most places, the longer…
For kilometer after kilometer, the landscape always seems the same. Pine trees and lakes. Lakes and pine trees. Driving the eastern side of the country - Lakeland in the south, Lapland above the Arctic Circle…
To turn a phrase, tourist money corrupts; overwhelming tourist interest corrupts overwhelmingly. In some environments, like the rain forests of Borneo, that turns a safari into a show. In the wild, orangutans are very difficult…
In the midst of a long day trip west of Riga, we chanced on an unusual museum, a testament to someone’s obsession for a subject – in this case, the enchantment of road building. Our…
In part 1, we discover why the Curonian Spit along the Baltic Sea is so unusual and engaging (click here to read it). In this part, we polish up our know-how about amber, the Baltic…