Lithuania, Estonia and a little more Latvia

From Jurmala in Latvia we Drove for about 4 hrs to Klaipeda in Lithuania. The cheapest option of accommodation that was available in the city was a 4 star hotel fro 50euros for the room which is what we had been paying for a hostel room so us backpackers styled it up for the night.
The hotel had a really cool roof terrace bar with a great view of the city. We headed to the old town for some dinner and decided to indulge in a local Lithuanian restaurant. Byron had a beer snack which consisted of raw Mackerel, smoked pigs ears, deep fried bread and cheese, it was revolting.
  
The next morning we headed for the Baltic bike hire shop and rented 2 mountain bikes to head off on our cycle along the curonian split. We cycled    52km through the pine trees and sand dunes to a town called Nida on the coast. We had an awesome day out and managed to time it perfectly with the weather. We arrived in Nida, had a much needed pizza and then took a bus back to Klaipeda. The black clouds had been rolling in all morning and as we got on the bus the thunder storm broke.

We had to make our way back to Riga in Latvia to drop the car off so decided to stop off on the way to break up the drive. Just before crossing over the boarder into Latvia again we stopped off at the hill of a crosses. About 200 0000 crosses are displayed on a hill. The place has come to signify the peaceful endurance of Lithuanian Catholicism even though The russians tried to destroy it 3 times but never succeeded. 
After crossing the boarder we found a little place on the road side to stay. There was a country music festival going on in the town nearby where The locals were all dressed up in their cowboy gear and ready to razzle. Our neighbours in the hotel came back at 1am from the party, we had to get the ear plugs out as the man's snoring was as though we were sleeping right next to an animal. 

The next day we met up with Vladimir in Riga again to drop the car off, bye bye yellow bomber, and then headed on our first bus trip to Tallinn in Estonia. After 5hrs we arrived in tallinn and got in a cab to find the hostel we had booked. The taxi driver proceeded to then tell us that the hostel we had booked was next door to a local strip club so all the gross men check in there and bring back prossies, oh yay you can only imagine how that made me feel especially as it was Saturday night. I brought out the travel sheet again and didn't shower!
Tallinn old town is lovely, beautiful cobbled streets and churches and lots restaurants and bars along the streets. It was probably the busiest city we have been to so far in the Baltics and heard other English tourists for the first time. This also made it very expensive, we had dinner at hesburger take out for 8 Euros for both of us and then I had a glass of red wine at one of the restaurants for 9 euros, most expensive glass of average wine! It only gets dark now at about 11.30pm and light again at 5am so the days are long which is great. 

On the ferry now on the way to Helsinki.

Roof top bar in klaipeda 

Dried fish in a packet sold off the shelf

Beer snack of pigs ears

Hill of crosses

Beautiful sunset

Cycle from Klaipeda  to Nida 

Even the men love a short jort here