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Fistral Beach, Newquay

Great Western Beach Harbour, Newquay

Im home again, (home as in Singapore home now) after another 11days spent in Scandinavia. It was a busy trip - copenhagen - stockholm - tallin - helsinki. We stayed home for a day and then drove off to Newquay in Cornwall to surf. yeah, I'm rather hopeless actually. But i guess the 5 hour drive by J was well worth it - that poor boy was knackered!

The man in the window at sunset

J at his most natural shot during dinner

Sunrise at Great Western Beach.
Can't believe J woke up at 5am to take gazillion photos of it.

Beautiful weather, nice B&B with lovely people & good sea views, plus a deliciously oily & meaty & salty full english fry up. :) Just the right nosh for hungry surfers. My first attempt at surfing is much less glamourous than i thought it would be. Got a couple of bruises & scratches on my face from getting hit by surfboards & going underwater. :( Plus the fact that it was freezing cold & the saltwater, together with the potent combination of dripping sunscreen just created mayhem in my eyes & i could barely see once i go under. Haha. Before all that, I had to struggle into this wet, sandy wetsuit which was absolutely skin-tight. That had already worked off all my energies before i even picked up my surfboard. -_- Haha. So that was surfing in a nutshell. We headed for a pint after that usually, had dinner soon after & ironically had quiet nights in Newquay party central. No one's complaining though. I'm happy to behave like other pensioners when im exhausted.

Christianhavn, Copenhagen

Helsingor cannons & beach

Danger Mouseeee tee

Before that - Denmark was probably my favourite country out of the 4 we've visited. Although everything was obscenely expensive, the people were extremely nice, including our host at Rosa B&B - he looked so enthusiastic with his sparkly cat-like eyes. I still remember the luscious breakfast we woke up to every morning. Christiania is so damned cool, i want to be danish as well. haha, it's so anti-establishment but welcoming towards tourists at the same time. (too bad, no pics available - they did not allow photos.) Well, i like the fact that the country and capital is quiet and green almost everywhere and the coastline is just the best place to live at, if you don't mind the cold. They make the best hotdogs too!

Somewhere along the northern part of Denmark, along the coast.

The view from across Gamla Stan, Stockholm

Stockholm, Sweden was a funky place, definitely livelier than Copenhagen, but also with more tourists. We didn't travel out of the capital much as there were more things to do & explore within its boundaries. I admire the beautiful achipelago & also wished that I was able to enjoy such a luxurious waterfront lifestyle too. The swedes looked so much at ease driving their boat around the waters, with their blonde hair flying out behind them in the wind, it's such a classic sight - reminds me of Teddy boys. We had some mishaps there, with regards to this supposedly world-reknowed jazz club, which was never open! So we just ended up at at nearby pub drinking swedish lager. We also spent much of our time in museums - such as the vasamuseet, the music museum, the open-air museum (which j thinks is a farce for a bad zoo). We soon got tired of museums after all that information overload about the stone, bronze & iron age in the past 8 days.

Sodermalm? Stockholm

A scene out of medieval era woods in the open air museum

Absolut Vodka Ice Bar in Stockholm

Music Museum!

Sunset on the Baltic sea at 9pm

We took the metro to the port to take our overnight cruise to Tallin, and I am so glad that our room looks lovely! Just 4 doors away from the suites! That's well posh. Haha, well onboard entertainment was typically cheesy - bad pub singers, swedish & classic pop songs in the lounge. Therefore, we spent more time on the decks, taking pictures of the sunset. We had a nice dinner- how can i forget that overly rich stuffed pasta with lobster, drowned in some kind of cheese-cream sauce. :S We then spent most of the evening making conversation in our cabin - we were absolutely too stuffed to do anything else.

Pretentious poses by the both of us

The next morning, we were chased out of our cabin as we arrived in Tallin. We made arrangements for our ferry to Helsinki and then walked to our brisk, no-nonsense hotel at the railway station. It was raining lightly when we were wandering into the Old Town in search of lunch. We had no choice but to stop at BEER HOUSE. No other place would have been able to snatch our attention away from this place. The waiter was extremely comic - he stabbed his finger as us "BEER?" "LARGE?" So both of us confused people just nodded subserviently and was pleasantly shocked when we were given 1 litre mugs of beer. FYI, that's actually our breakfast! uh oh. We had crispy fried pig ears as starters, along with this awesom-est fish soup. Then we shared a roast wild boar for a main. It was a torture to finish all that - which is why i committed a cardinal sin - to leave my beer & walk away from it. :( So we continued our walk around town and visited some shops & another museum about tallin's history. It's a quaint & quiet little museum - the one u know that the display hasn't been changed for the last 30 years. I liked it a lot. Soon, dusk fell and we headed to Hell-Hunt - The best and first pub in tallin. Spent the night there before retiring home.

Vannallin (tallin town) - some look out point on a tower

1 litre of estonian beer at beer house

We checked out, joined the free tour headed by this hyper teenage blonde estonian girl with something like an american accent. It was informative, though her sense of humour wasn't well appreciated. One thing extremely clear from the 3 hours was that the estonians have not forgotten the harsh soviet rule - still a touchy subject among them. Such deep is their hatred, they actually perceived the Nazis as their liberators from USSR. This explains why she said the world should punish Stalin just as much as Hitler. Some old man got angry when she said that, but it was phrased more vaguely. He left soon after. Well well - everyone still carries some sort of historical baggage with them. The occupation museum which i visisted carried a wealth of historical information about both their german and soviet occupation- good to visit if youre a nerd like me.

The cathedral in Helsinki

Lake at Nuuskio National Reserve

Finally, ferry to Helsinki was uneventful. Got ourselves to Kampi town centre, checked into our rooms & crashed for the night although we were planning to join the queue into a club. Slept in late again on monday, went to look for lunch & had mexicana nosh for brunch. Beer again! for breakfast. Then we headed to Espoo national reserve, it was pretty alright, but j said it looks just like new forest in sussex. Not such a bad thing except that we waited an hour for the bus to take us back to the train station. Slept in again on tuesday morning - woke up to realise that we only had time to catch the flight, which we eventually did. home sweet home, until newquay.

Mirror mirror

The old man pub which smelt of sweat near our hotel

So now that I'm home, in my trashed up room which I have no motivation to clean up, I seem to have nothing to do, although I do actually have some things which i need to do as required by the school. grah. Thankfully, its the final year of uni, i wouldn't be able to stand anymore of this nonsense. Anyway, I feel really strange at the moment, like there's no aim in life. I'm just trying to pass time until I head out at night to meet the girls. I miss J. :(

J in the hole