Caliban - Opinion and Righteous Anger

The dining-room ceiling was repainted yesterday, along with the kitchen and living-room ceilings, too, because they run seamlessly into the dining-room. I must say, the painters did a nice job; better than the gang we had in last time.

We're almost back to normal. Tomorrow afternoon, the lamps will be rehung over the table and the smoke detector reseated.

At that point, it'll be as if the leak had never happened. Well, almost. There are a few tell-tale signs of the trauma that the ceiling has endured: the painted surface is visibly rougher in a couple of places and there are some slight seams at the edges of the former hole, where the filler meets the original ceiling.

All in all, though, I'm amazed that there's so little evidence of the very intrusive work that was done. Everyone involved in the chain of repair has done an impressive job. That fact alone is quite surprising to me. We've had a very good contractor orchestrating the repair and I must say that it's been great to be insulated from the process by this fellow. I've had to deal only with him and he has organised and dealt with everyone who needed to be brought in.

That's how it should work, of course, but all too often, I find myself fulfilling the role of project manager. It's been particularly nice to have a different experience this time, given the complexity of finding and fixing the problem. There's been a minimum of fuss and the work has been completed quite quickly. It's great to be able to leave on holiday this Sunday without any fear of the state we'll find the place in on our return.

Here I am again at Audi, waiting for summer and air-conditioning checks to be carried out in preparation for our trip.

The fan in the car actually started growling after I made the appointment to have the airco checked over, as if the car knew that now was the time to start throwing in the towel.

At the start of the drive here, the electrically driven side mirrors decided not to fold in or out any more, so now those have to be looked at, too. The more electronics in a car (or anything else, for that matter), the more that go wrong. Still, better now than a week from now, when we'll be in the Baltics.

I wanted to title this entry Waiting Room, but the computer here wanted to complete the title for me, revealing that I must have used that title the last time I blogged from here. I'm nothing if not consistent, is one possible conclusion.

A couple of days ago, the day of a long-waited concert finally rolled around. Last October, I purchased tickets for the stage production of Jeff Wayne's Musical Version Of The War Of The Worlds at the tackily named and shamelessly over-commercialised Heineken Music Hall, here in Amsterdam. I don't think I've ever purchased tickets that far in advance of an event before.

The multi-platinum album has been in my collection for some 30 years now. Nary a human-being, never mind an inanimate object, has featured so consistently throughout the passage of my life.

Although the music on the album sounds dated now (particularly the wah-wah of the rhythm guitar), the story is as fresh and compelling today as when the book was first published. And, whilst the music clearly hails from the seventies with its fusion of disco rhythms and bombastic prog-rock tendencies, it's still eminently enjoyable.

I bought a couple of singles from the album back in 1978/79, but it wasn't until a school trip to Rome with my Latin class that I was exposed to the whole album; repeatedly, incessantly, in the coach on the way there and then back again, so that the listening experience became inextricably linked with that one, brief period in the space and time of my lost youth.

Listening to it now, therefore, is not only an enjoyable and meritorious musical experience in its own right, but inevitably also a nostalgic excursion to a period of my life now so far removed that it, too, seems little more than vivid fiction.

The stage show has never travelled to continental Europe before. The performance in Amsterdam was to be the only one of its kind at the end of a UK tour, but the tickets sold out so quickly that another night was soon added. Somewhat later, a third performance was tacked onto the schedule, along with a night or two in Oberhausen, Germany.

Reviews of the stage production can be found all over the Internet, so I won't go into detail here. Suffice it to say that I was blown away, particularly by how faithfully the sound of the album had been reproduced. That's due, perhaps, to a decent number of the original recording cast having been contracted for the stage show, with Jeff Wayne himself conducting.

Sarah, too, for whom the music was basically an unknown quantity, enjoyed herself immensely.

After the concert, we picked up a copy of that very evening's concert on CD and headed home, where Mina had been babysitting for us.

To our amazement, she had managed to put both children to bed with very little fuss and they had slept soundly for almost the entire evening, Lucas awakening only once, briefly, for a quick grumble before going back to sleep.

I ripped the CDs and we were listening to the performance again the very next morning. The quality of the mix was incredibly good and I'm very impressed by the fact that Concert Live can have CDs of a show on sale within fifteen minutes of the final note having been struck. That's no mean feat and there's no better memento of a gig than a high-quality recording of it.

The third night's performance will be broadcast live tonight by Radio 2 and won't cost you a thing.

As I write this, the 2009 Tour de France has just got under way. Lance Armstrong is riding through the streets of Monaco in glorious HD, the first-ever HD broadcast of Nederland 1. In that respect, it's a pisser that we go on holiday tomorrow, as I'll be lucky if I manage to catch any stages on TV after today's prologue. Still, our car has built-in DVB-T TV, just in case.

It's that funny time of year. School has broken up, it's baking hot outside and the city already feels as if it's switched down a couple of gears as the seasonal exodus gets under way.

Yesterday, we spent the afternoon in the Amsterdamse Bos for Het Speelhol's climactic Indian Picnic. At the end, we said our reluctant goodbyes to Wanda and the other parents, as it'll now be an infrequent occurrence that our paths cross.

After the summer, Eloïse starts at primary school. We went there last Monday to introduce her to her new teacher, Yvette, and give her her the chance to look around her new classroom. Although she was shy at the beginning, she had loosened up somewhat by the end and was very positive about what she had seen. I'm confident she's going to fit in very well and she seems completely ready for the next big step in her life.

The parents seated themselves in semicircular fashion and Yvette played a little bit of harp before telling a story about a cat, using plastic farmyard animals to bring it to life. Lukie, especially, found this immensely entertaining and giggled all the way through. He must have seemed to the parents of the other new children the world's easiest, most joyful baby. Little do they know that even cherub-like Lukie has his tantrums.

Our confidence that Eloïse will thrive at her new school notwithstanding, it was hard to say goodbye to Wanda. It's even harder to imagine that we'll no longer make that five minute walk twice a day to Het Speelhol. It's become such a regular fixture in our lives, a daily metronome, tapping out the rhythm of our afternoons.

Perhaps the hardest thing to imagine is that I'll have to start getting up early to ride Eloïse to her new school on the bakfiets. Ugh. She'll probably be used to her new school before I get used to that.

Why does it always take so long to get ready for a trip? A million chores have to be completed in the 24 hours preceding departure.

Audi didn't manage to find the problem with the wing mirrors not folding in or out. They can't have looked very hard, though, because my trusty laptop and magic cable took just a couple of minutes to determine that there is an intermittent "short to ground" in the mirror motors of both the driver and passenger doors. Of course, Audi's bill for their trouble, which arrived today, includes a labour charge for time spent investigating the problem. Right. I don't think so. I'll have to get that sorted out when we get back.

I've just burned a pile of CDs to keep Eloïse amused in the car. We considered giving her her own digital music player, but I don't like the idea of isolating family members behind a set of headphones. I'd rather pay the price of having to listen to her music while I drive than lose the ability to talk to her about the trip ahead and the things we see passing by the window.

I realise now that I never blogged about my impressions of Disneyland in Paris.

Well, it struck me as a rather surreal form of concentration camp, in which victims of commercial indoctrination voluntarily incarcerate themselves for multiple days at a time. Hard labour in the form of endless queueing is then the order of the day, sustained by a shamefully poor diet whose caloric content is inversely proportional to its nutritional value.

In short, Disneyland is best enjoyed if you find yourself gently hovering somewhere between the predicates 'moron' and 'idiot'. If you have a double digit IQ or a single digit age, Disneyland is the place for you; as long as you have a quadruple digit budget, that is.

The worst cases, the irretrievably insane, can be easily spotted: they are the ones unaccompanied by children. What these people are doing there is anybody's guess.

As I probably wrote at the time, though, Eloïse had a great time, although even she was saying that she wanted to go home on the last day. She even rode the Tower of Terror a couple of times, a ride that had grown men screaming.

We have a five hour drive ahead of us tomorrow to Kiel in Germany. It might not sound like much, but it's long enough with a baby in the car. Speaking of Lucas, we bought him a pair of sunglasses today, but it remains to be seen whether he'll be prepared to leave them on.

Getting to Lithuania was completely painless. We left home shortly after noon on Sunday and drove 500 odd kilometres to a surprisingly pleasant hotel, conveniently located just off the A21 in Germany. This enabled us to literally drive off the motorway into the hotel's car park and drive back onto it the next morning.

This was almost identical to the route we took last year, when we caught the ferry from Puttgarden to Rødby in Denmark. This time, though, we were to catch the ferry from Kiel, some distance west of Puttgarden. Thanks to our children waking up at the crack of dawn, we arrived at the harbour in Kiel early on Monday morning and were able to check in at a leisurely pace.

At around 12:30, we drove aboard the DFDS Lisco Gloria, where we abandoned the car and headed for our cabin, which turned out to be a little more spacious than we had been expecting.

The crossing was very smooth and Denmark was visible on the port side for several hours after departure. There wasn't much to do, so we hung out in the bar for most of the afternoon. I read our guidebook and the children largely amused themselves.

All around us, TV sets spewed third-rate American tat, rendered even more insipid by the Lithuanian dubbing, which employs the same deadpan voice for all of the actors; yes, even those of the opposite sex. This doesn't seem to perturb the Lithuanians, though, who are presumably bludgeoned into acceptance at an early age.

Dinner and breakfast on the boat were notable, but only because they were particularly bad. The available items were deceptive in their apparent edibility, but soon betrayed their composition of a strange concoction of wax and grease.

I paid the bar another visit in the evening, by which time it was full of Lithuanian lorry drivers, knocking back cheap vodka.

We docked at noon the next day after a pleasant passage along Kuršių Nerija, better known in English as the Curonian Spit. We were one of the first cars off the boat and headed straight to Klaipėda for lunch, stopping en route for some satisfyingly sub-euro petrol.

As anticipated, the sat-nav had only cursory coverage of Klaipėda, but it was enough to point us towards the town centre, where we parked and found a place to have lunch.

Klaipėda is very downbeat and unassuming, a relaxed way to make Lithuania's acquaintance and a good place to kill a few hours.

After some spent walking around in the glorious sunshine, we returned to the car and headed to the ferry that would take us across the water to the Curonian Spit.

A few minutes later, we were on the Spit and driving south through the national park to the small settlement of Nida, where we were booked in for a couple of nights.

Nida is about 4 km from the border with the Russian Kaliningrad oblast, an exclave marooned by the disintegration of the former USSR.

For the hell of it, we drove all the way down to the border before turning back. Even if we'd wanted to go further, we have neither visas nor car insurance for Russia, so we'd never get in. We could have arranged both in advance of our departure, of course, but this whole trip was rather last-minute and there wasn't really enough time to surrender our passports and have them got hrough the Russian bureaucratic mangle.

Today, we had planned to go biking along the Spit, but thunderstorms and pouring rain that lasted well into the afternoon put paid to that idea. Instead, we spent the morning couped up in our room.

After a good lunch, we drove up to the fragile sand dunes for which the Curonian Spit is famous. They're really quite beautiful and vaguely reminiscent of desert sands. These are the highest drifting sand dunes in Europe and well worth a visit. From the 52 m summit of the Parnidis dune, one can see rippling dunes stretching into Russia and to the horizon.

We spent a good length of time walking around the sand dunes before we headed back into town, soon after which it started to rain again. We consider ourselves lucky to have salvaged anything from the day.

Dinner this evening, at Sena Sodyba, was delicious. The food here has been very good so far, better than I'd dared hope from my reading and experiences on the ferry.

Yesterday, I had my first taste of cepelinai, which are a kind of potato dumpling. They're very stodgy, but taste a lot better than they look.

Foreign tourists are clearly quite the minority here. Most of the tourists in this summer hotspot are the Lithuanians themselves, with quite a few Germans and the occasional Russian. I've seen a couple of Dutch cars driving around, too, but not many.

Not much English is spoken here, so we occasionally have to break into broken German to get the message across. Lithuanian's a bit of a tongue-twister, but it's fun to try, even if my attempts are invariably met with hilarity.

We haven't quite figured out whether we're going to try to stay here another night or drive north to Latvia tomorrow. We'd like to do tomorrow what we intended to do today, but there's no guarantee the weather will be any better tomorrow.

We're in Latvia.

We awoke yesterday to find that Mother Nature had smiled on us: it wasn't raining. Precipitation had battered our guesthouse for most of the night, so this really was a very pleasant surprise.

After breakfast, we hired bikes and rode out along the waterfront in the direction of Juodkrantė, another small town some 33 km further up the Curonian Spit.

I had hired a child trailer for my bike, much to Eloïse's glee, and was thus towing both children behind me. It's a good job I've lost some weight recently, because my human cargo and trailer more than redressed the balance.

With stops to pee and check our route, it took a good three hours to reach Juodkrantė. It was a really nice route, which I wish we could have taken a little more leisurely.

The route climaxed with a stiff climb from the Curonian Lagoon, up through the woods, and then yielded a rewarding descent into the town.

We'd opted for the lazy one-way bike hire option, so we dropped off our bikes and caught the bus back to Nida. It cost only 12 Lt for the lot of us and the hourly bus came as soon as we'd dumped the bikes, so that was a nice stroke of luck.

It was now after 14:00 and we really needed to get on the road, but, after our bike ride, we were in even greater need of a good meal and a few drinks, so we stopped off for lunch at Kavinė Pašiūrė, the restaurant where we'd had dinner the first evening. The food was good, but a muzack version of Baby's Got Blue Eyes was playing in an endless loop, which must surely be an inscrutable form of Latvian humour.

With bodily sustenance taken care of, we headed back to the car and finally got under way. Speed traps lined the road along the spit back to the ferry to Klaipėda, but the flashing headlights of oncoming motorists alerted us to imminent danger. We were cruising barely over the limit, anyway.

A quick ferry ride later, we were heading to our next excursion, secreted inside the Žemaitija National Park. The location we were looking for was the Plokštinė Nuclear Missile Launch Site, a rather odd thing to find inside a park dedicated to the region's flora and fauna, but situated in one, just the same.

The Soviet-era nuclear missile base was a bit tricky to find. Not only was it well out of our way to begin with, we took a wrong turn, had to turn back and eventually reached the site after 18:00, the time of the last tour of the day. Rather than simply leave, I decided to gamble wasting even more time and hope that I could somehow wangle us our tour in spite of the lateness of the hour.

When the tour guide emerged with the previous group, we told her our tale of woe of locating the site and she was kind enough to invite us down for an accelerated, but personal version of the tour. Great!

I can only say that it was an incredible experience to stand in one of the actual 30 m silo shafts that once housed a nuclear missile with a megatonne warhead. It's a chilling thought that these missiles were aimed at targets in western Europe just over three decades ago. The whole country only prised itself loose from the iron fist of the USSR just twenty years ago. When I was growing up, this was part of the USSR!

We visited many of the rooms inside the once top-secret complex. Fading Cyrillic text still adorns the walls and one can almost hear the ghostly footsteps of Soviet soldiers marching along the eerie corridors.

Our guide informed us that the soldiers who worked here were shipped in from other Soviet republics and had no idea where in the USSR they had been stationed, such was the secrecy surrounding the site. Local Lithuanians suspected the presence of a military base at the site, but even they didn't know for sure, because no civilians were allowed anywhere near it.

After what was one of the most memorable tours I've ever been on, we sped back along the A11 towards the coast, where we stopped for a quick dinner on the outskirts of Palanga, before heading north.

A long drive against the steadily fading sun was how we would spend the rest of the evening. We soon crossed the border into Latvia, but there was still much driving to be done before we would reach our bed for the night.

We finally drove into Kuldīga as the clock struck midnight. After checking in, two very tired children were immediately put to bed, ourselves following mere minutes later.

Today has been much more relaxed, ambling about town, visiting Europe's widest waterfall and a man made tunnel system. Glorious sunshine has been our escort wherever we have roamed.

There are far fewer foreign tourists here; virtually none, actually. This town is quite a way off the beaten track and I haven't even seen Lithuanian cars driving around. I've heard a couple of German voices today, plus a Dutch one. Even Latvian tourists are thin on the ground here.

I must mention that we had a lovely dinner at a restaurant called Pagrabiņš. Dessert, especially, was really nice, although you wouldn't immediately suspect that if you knew that it was made from rye bread. Nevertheless, rupjmaizes kārtojums is something I highly recommend.

The menu offered lots of dishes whose names had clearly lost some nuance during the journey from Latvian to English. Dishes with impenetrable names like Poke In Foam adorned the menu. Who could know that this was actually bull's testicles?

I almost plumped for the Tresses For Husbandwomen, but decided at the last minute to try the Bravery Chicken.

Tomorrow, we head for the Latvian capital, Rīga.

Fit for a king, indeed. The Latvian capital is a charming city, instantly likeable in its understated lustre.

For most of today's journey, the sat-nav once again showed us traversing a massive, white expanse. As far as she (our sat-nav is a lady, in case you didn't know) is concerned, we might as well have been bounding across the dark side of the moon.

Yes, around these parts, a paper map is still indispensable. Luckily, we had one at hand for navigation 20th century style.

We've been struck by the number of storks we've seen on our travels so far. They're a common sight as one drives across the countryside. Many families have erected large poles in their garden, on which they hope a stork will build its nest (and, more often than not, they're right). The reason they hope the stork will visit, of course, is to bestow children on their household. We still haven't seen the rarer black stork, however.

We drove north-eastwards to Roja on the coast and then turned south-eastwards along the P131 coastal road. The road was less interesting then we'd hoped, but it was still a pleasant drive.

Our chosen destination for lunch was Jūrmala, a beach resort about 25 km west of Rīga. Back when Latvia was still an unwilling member state of the USSR, Jūrmala was a favourite holiday destination for high-ranking Communist Party officials, including Brezhnev and Khrushchev.

These days, Russian can still be seen and heard everywhere, from restaurant menus to posters advertising toe-curlingly cheesy evening entertainment crooners. Even we, as we walked down Jomas iela, were addressed in Russian by market stall vendors.

It's hardly surprising, really. During the days of the USSR, 1.5 million Russians (were) moved into Latvia, rendering ethnic Latvians a minority in their own land. Things have evened out somewhat since then, but even now, only just over half the country consists of ethnic Latvians. In Rīga, the capital, ethnic Latvians are still outnumbered by a mixture of Russians, Ukrainians, Poles and others.

Jomas iela is the main drag in the Jūrmala sub-resort of Majori. We actually managed to score some decent food on that street, which, judging by the restaurant facades, one wouldn't have dared anticipate. This kind of street looks much the same all over the world. Only the languages on the menu differ.

Afterwards, we headed for the beach, which turned out to be a 30+ km stretch of golden sanded coastline. The beach was really lovely, and both Eloïse and Lucas certainly agreed.

Sand sculptures lined the beach, some of them quite stunning. I got the impression there had been a competition earlier in the day.

We had to press on, though, so we were forced to leave the beach and head back to the car for the remaining half hour of our journey to Rīga. And, to my surprise, the drive did take only half an hour. I was prepared for longer, given the fact that we were driving into the heart of a capital city with a destination in the mediaeval centre, but the sat-nav guided us right to the door of our hotel.

After checking in, there was time for an hour's exploration of the city before dinner. The capital quickly revealed itself to be charming, relaxed and unpretentious. There are overtones of a multitude of mediaeval European cities, but with enough distinct, idiosyncratic flavour that Rīga doesn't remind me of any other city in particular. Of course, we've seen very little of the place so far and I'm lucking forward to getting stuck in properly tomorrow.

Latvia is shaping up to be a very memorable holiday in its own right. The country is quite distinct from the rest of Europe. It's scarcely twenty years old as an independent nation, sparsely populated and bore the unenviable distinction of being the poorest country iin the EU in 2006. In recent times, its economy has boomed as the free market rushed in to fill the post-Soviet vacuum.

Now, of course, things have slowed again, which may just give Latvia a chance to catch up with its own growth. For example, there are twice as many cars on the road today as ten years ago, but Latvia, together with the other Baltic countries, now tops the EU road fatality charts, having bumped Greece from the number one position that it had seemed it would occupy for the rest of time.

From an environmental perspective, the country is relatively unspoilt, with about half of it covered by dense forest. New types of flora and fauna are still discovered here and the country is home to the continent's largest wild mammals. There are wild horses and bison here, for example.

It's clear that the Baltic countries are still largely undiscovered gems, ancient societies and yet burgeoning independent nations. I can't think of a better place for us to have come for our summer trip. I just hope that we'll have enough time to pack it all in before we have to be back in Amsterdam.

Reading between the lines, it seems that Sarah's folks still aren't convinced about Rīga (and the Baltics in general). She spoke to them on the phone today and told me afterwards that they sounded sceptical about her enthusiasm for the place, referring to our trip so far as "interesting", in the same way that your boss might call your brilliant proposal "interesting", before binning it the moment you leave the room.

I suspect that the country's former status as an unwilling member state of the USSR has something to do with the misconception that this might be a drab and dreary place to spend time. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth.

Rīga is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Why?

If look up UNESCO's advisory body evaluation, you'll read on page 4 that, "as an assemblage of Art Nouveau/Jugendstil buildings... it is impossible to cite any city to compare with Riga".

People tend to focus more on the recent past than on a location's history through the centuries. The misconception therefore arises that former Soviet states must be an endless array of blots on the landscape, a mind-numbing freak show of utilitarian concrete edifices, erected to make a deliberately anti-artistic statement, emphasising function over form.

That notion actually can and does apply to areas of the world that the Soviets actually built, but Rīga has a hugely rich pre-Soviet history. Before it became the USSR's third city (after Moscow and St. Petersburg), it had an illustrious past spanning hundreds of years. At one time, for example, it was the largest port under Swedish control, larger than Stockholm itself.

Many of the buildings here are hundreds of years old. After a long walk across the city today, I can confirm that the Art Nouveau architecture on display here is the finest of any city I've ever been to. I'm no expert, of course, but as UNESCO point out, whilst buildings of similar architectural stature can be found in Barcelona, Brussels, Glasgow, Helsinki, Moscow, Paris, and Prague, those are all individual structures. Rīga, in contrast, has whole streets adorned with stunning examples of the movement. Your camera never stops clicking as the gargoyles and beguiling sirens stare down at you from on high.

Architecture, though, is just one of Rīga's many facets. We've also been lapping up the food, kafejnīcas and parks today.

On the subject of food, I must put in a mention for Šefpavārs Vilhelms (on Šķūņu iela) and its dirt-cheap pancakes. Three plates, loaded up with pancakes and condiments (jam, sour cream, etc.), plus a round of drinks, set us back only Ls 4.20. That's just under €6!

The café culture here is obviously very appealing to us. A city where you can't find a good spot to sit outside and people-watch whilst nursing a delicious cappuccino hasn't earned its place on the map, as far as I'm concerned. Rīga scores well on this count.

And, whilst I'm very happy to live near the Vondelpark in Amsterdam, I'd be even happier if it its upkeep could compare with that of the parks in Rīga.

Fear not, I haven't lost my perspective. I like this place a lot, but I'm not about to move here. I'd have to consider Stockholm or Istanbul before I could even contemplate Rīga, but this city certainly does press all of the right buttons and send the meter needles flicking.

Another day in the Latvian capital awaits us tomorrow, and that means at least two good things are in store for us: another day without driving and another sumptuous breakfast, courtesy of the lovely Hotel Centra.

Today was our last day in Rīga. We'd considered staying another day, but we've essentially done what we came here to do and there's still so much to see on this trip. That said, we've scarcely been out of Vecrīga, the historical old town district.

The highlight today (for me, anyway) was a visit to the verbosely named Museum of the Occupation of Latvia 1940 - 1991. The ironic location for this museum is inside a hideous Soviet-era building (the only one still standing in the city, left as a deliberate, haunting reminder) that was once, in an all too recent past, home to the Museum of Latvian Red Rifleman.

The museum is a moving experience, featuring heart-rending of deportation to Siberia; torture, death and famine in the Gulags; perceived liberation from the Soviets when Nazi Germany invaded, followed by horrific disillusionment when they started to systematically execute Latvia's jews in the forests;the ousting of the Nazis by the second Soviet invasion; and last, but not least, the complicity of the West in allowing the Baltic nations to be annexed by the USSR at the end of WW II, when the rights of other European nations to self-govern were explicitly granted and protected.

Pretty much every nation has had a hand in the persecution of the Latvian people, but the USSR and Nazi Germany were the worst offenders by a considerable margin.

It's shocking to think how recent some of these events were. For example, after the death of Stalin, the programme of forced deportation and resettlement was relaxed somewhat, and deportees were allowed to return to their native republics. However, until the end of the eighties, it wasn't legal to even discuss the deportations. These people, whose were often separated from the rest of their families, with no knowledge of whether their loved ones were dead or alive, returned home after decades in exile and weren't even allowed to discuss the experience with another human-being. Stories like that put problems like leaking ceilings in the proper perspective.

The museum is packed with detail and it would take a day to see it all. I did my best with two small children in tow (and Sarah trying to entertain them), but I couldn't spend as much time on each exhibit as I would have liked.

Our other main activity today was a visit to Rīga's central market, where one can buy everything from pig snouts to strawberries, where counterfeit CDs and Russian-manufactured bootleg MP3 CD compilations are sold next to stands purveying kvass, a drink made from fermented rye bread. Eloïse and Sarah liked this drink, but I didn't think much of it. Still, at twenty santīms a beaker, who's complaining?

Tomorrow, it's a relatively short hop to Sigulda for a couple of nights.

We clocked only about 75 km today on the way from Rīga to Sigulda. Sigulda's actually only about 53 km from Rīga; the rest was local driving in the vicinity of our destination.

The drive was still ample for Eloïse to enjoy three complete run-throughs of her recently acquired Pippeloentje CD. We didn't get to listen to anything but ithe umpteenth rendition of Eloïse singing along to this version of Annie M.G. Schmidt's work set to music.

Anyway, we finished off in Rīga with a trip to the top of the spire of St. Peter's Church for fantastic panoramic views over the city. This was an absolute must-see. We had wanted to do it yesterday, but the church is closed on Mondays.

With that taken care of, we drove out of Rīga through the newer districts to the north and arrived in Sigulda about an hour later.

Sigulda's a small town with about 10,000 inhabitants, so the pace of life feels nice and slow; just what we're looking for.

After checking in and eating lunch next door, we visited the castle just up the road in Turaida. To be honest, it was a bit of a disappointment, as I had envisaged a grand, intact castle in the Czech fashion. What we got instead was a bit disjointed, more of an exhibition/museum spread across several disparate, reconstructed towers. The emphasis was on the items that had been excavated in the area, with the castle itself being of only secondary importance.

Oh well. Sigulda's nice enough, anyway, and dinner was the best meal we've had in Latvia thus far.

We'll be staying here again tomorrow.

This morning, we drove up the road to Līgatne in order to visit a former Soviet bunker located nine metres beneath a rehabilitation centre.

The bunker was designed to enable the orchestration of a nuclear war to continue underground in the event of life above ground having become untenable. It was such a closely guarded secret that knowledge of its existence only became public in 2003, twelve years after Latvia's becoming an independent nation once again.

The stench of the subterranean stale air was overpowering, but the tour was fascinating, nonetheless. Amongst other things, we were shown telephones that had once provided a hotline to the Kremlin, ancient Russian computers, a radioactivity decontamination room, and the kitchen where the staff ate. For kicks, I tried on a gas-mask for size.

No-one who worked in the rehabilitation centre upstairs knew of the existence of the bunker below their facility. How this secret was kept is anyone's guess.

Our guide told us that local residents, some of whom had been employed in the bunker (it was a civilian facility), are still afraid to talk about their experiences there. This means that, even now, many questions about the operation of the bunker remain unanswered. Hardly surprising, when you consider that these people lived in an era when fear that your neighbour or even your spouse might actually be a KGB agent struck terror into the hearts of many.

It was another chilling reminder of how recently Cold War activities were suspended.

Afterwards, we went to the nearby town of Cēsis, where we had a wander around. After watching Eloïse play in some fountains, we headed back towards the car, stopping off at a place called Aroma for a notably bad lunch. Medium rare pork: ugh!

Back in Sigulda, we went on a hike that took us past a couple of castle ruins, on a cable-car across a valley, and eventually down to the Gūtmaņa Cave.

A girl passing by on a golf-cart-style sightseeing buggy spotted us at the bus-stop and gave us a ride back to our hotel for a couple of lats.

We decided on the easy option of dining at our hotel's restaurant, which happily turned out to serve excellent food. A nice addition to the meal was that we got talking to a Dutch couple who are making a tour of the Baltics very similar to our own. I wouldn't be surprised if we ran into them again.

Tonight's our last night in Latvia for a while, because our destination for tomorrow is Pärnu on the west coast of Estonia. The drive will theoretically take us about two and a half hours.

Pärnu is supposedly a top summer beach destination for Finns and Swedes, who jostle with the Estonians for hotel rooms and a prime spot on the sand. I believe it, too, because we had plenty of trouble finding a hotel room in the town.

I'm looking forward to seeing how Estonia differs from Latvia and Lithuania. It's the only country we won't be leaving and re-entering (unless we decide later to make an excursion by boat to Helsinki) as we continue our clockwise tour of the Baltic region, because we'll enter along the west coast and drive in semi-circular fashion over to the east of the country, before re-entering Latvia.

It's hard to believe that we've already been on the road eleven days. It's all gone so quickly. At the same time, though, we've packed in quite a lot, making the first couple of days in Lithuania seem more like three weeks ago now.

We left Sigulda in the pouring rain this morning, but reunited with the sun as we reached the coast and turned northwards towards Estonia.

The sun was a faithful companion all the way to our destination, as if a meteorological metaphor for the fact that Lucas also remained sound asleep until we were in our hotel's car-park.

The drive took about 2.25 hours and was very relaxing, carrying us through seemingly endless forests, a glimpse of the sea occasionally teasing us through the trees.

So, here we are in Pärnu. Estonia doesn't immediately strike me as a lot different to either Latvia or Lithuania, with the obvious exception of the language. Latvian and Lithuanian have some commonalities, even if speakers of the two languages are not mutually intelligible, but Estonian is an entirely different kettle of fish.

Still, my first stab at the language today went well, as I enquired what time a laundrette would open on Saturday.

Pärnu is not really my kind of place. It's quite pretty, but has given itself over entirely to tourism. The Finns and the Swedes are, indeed, here in droves, as are Estonians from all over this small country. I haven't yet heard any German or Dutch voices, but it must surely only be a matter of time.

We looked around town today and ate at a local pizza place. The food, whilst delicious, carved a path through me like a luge along an Olympic ice chute, but took just long enough for us to have left the restaurant and no longer be in its vicinity. As we walked through town, I had to charge like greased lightning into a nearby restaurant to avert an unthinkable calamity. It was a close shave, I can tell you.

With the day's excitement out of the way, we continued our walk around town. There's not much going on here, apart from what you usually find in a coastal beach resort. It's all got an Estonian twist, of course, but is otherwise unremarkable.

The beach, though, is still an unknown quantity at this point. We're saving that for tomorrow.

Dinner was Estonian Tex-Mex at Mõnus Margarita. Well, you've got to give these things a go, haven't you? The food was disappointingly (yes, a disappointment, which proves I'm an optimist) poor, but a terrific play corner, featuring a large pen filled with the kind of plastic balls that you can dive into and drift across, kept our two children out of our hair for at least some of the meal.

The weather was roasting hot today, or at least seemed it, with the awful humidity that accompanied the heat. I was hoping that evening thunderstorms would dispel the oppression, but they haven't materialised.

Our hotel is nice, but overpriced. It does, however, boast an award-winning chef, at whose restaurant we have made a reservation for tomorrow evening. We should therefore be in for a good meal, at least. I wouldn't be surprised if breakfast turns out to be something special, too.

Well, let's hope tomorrow's beach turns out to be something to write home about. There must be some reason all those people come here. Otherwise, it's as good a place as any to do some laundry.

That was the slogan I saw today on a T-shirt bearing the acronym W.I.F.E. Another sign, if any were needed, that we're in a beach town. Still, I haven't yet seen a T-shirt glorifying the pastime of excessive drinking, so the area must be better than most.

And it is. I've changed my mind about Pärnu. I like it. It's Saturday today and the town felt as if it had ratcheted down a gear or two. The oppressive humidity broke and the mercury in the thermometer sank a few degrees, resulting in nigh on perfect circumstances for a visit to the beach.

And a fabulous beach it is, too, living up to and surpassing our highest hopes: not too crowded; clean; a gently-receding and therefore shallow shoreline; good toilet facilities; powdery, golden sand; water a comfortable temperature. Who'd have thought a beach this good was lurking along an inlet from the Baltic Sea?

Of course, as I wrote yesterday, to the Estonians, Finns and Swedes, it's anything but a secret. Outside of those ethnic groups, however, it seems much less well known. I still haven't heard any other languages here, although many menus are also written in Russian and English, so there's a clue.

We spent the entire morning on the beach. The children enjoyed themselves no end, both in the water and on the sand. Surprisingly, we eventually left at Eloïse's behest, as she was getting very tired. Lucas was already fast asleep in the buggy by that point.

After lunch, we walked around town again, this time encountering wide, leafy green boulevards, quietly charming parks and the occasional prestigious mansion.

Café Picadilly provided a terrific cup of coffee and a reasonably good slice of cake, which was just what was needed to plug the post-lunch, pre-dinner gap.

After playing with the children in a nearby park, we went to pick up our laundry, now fresh and clean again. It's often tricky finding somewhere practical to do laundry when you're on the road. Hotels offer the service, of course, but you might as well buy new clothes for the prices most of those liberty-taking bastards charge.

Lucas is very close to walking now. He climbs to his feet, unassisted by us or any nearby objects. He then stands for a good twenty seconds or so, teeters on his toes, legs too far apart, before either flopping back onto his bum or diving forward, onto his hands, and crawling away. One day soon, he's going to put one foot in front of the other and his days of crawling will be behind him.

He's also developing a better understanding of language and an even more congenial sense of humour. If we ask him for kisses, he now purses his lips and cranes his head in our direction. When we lean forward to kiss him, he responds in kind, kisses in the manner of a goldfish and then giggles with glee.

In the last few days, he's also taken to babbling in a very consistent-sounding gobbledygook. It's an incredibly endearing sound when he does it and we're trying to capture its sound in a short video clip.

Dinner this evening was, as predicted, of very high quality, although not the best meal of the trip so far for me. Dinner in Nida the second evening and in Sigulda the first are still my favourite meals so far.

Breakfast, too, at this hotel, is delicious. I thought the pancakes, in particular, were perfectly cooked, with delicious apricot and bilberry jams to spread on them.

We leave Pärnu tomorrow and head west to Estonia's largest island, Saaremaa. We'll be staying in the town of Kuressaare for a couple of nights.

Saaremaa is about the size of Luxembourg, so we'll see only a small amount of it, but it's always nice to get out onto an island, as, so often, they're palpably different to the mainland, not just in terms of the geography, but also socially, giving a distinctly different impression of the country within whose political borders they lie.

To get to Saaremaa, we have to take a ferry from Virtsu on the mainland to the island of Muhu. Muhu is connected, in turn, to Saaremaa by a causeway, so we need only one ferry tomorrow.

We've now got the next ten or so nights firmly planned with accommodation already booked. Plotting out the days and weeks ahead, it appears that we will have time to make the anticipated excursion across the Gulf of Finland to Helsinki. I booked our round-trip ferry crossing this evening, plus the last available room in our hotel of choice, so I'm pleased to have secured that leg of the trip.

I hope the weather stays good tomorrow.

Well, this is sleepy Kuressaare, a pleasant little town on the south coast of the Estonian island of Saaremaa.

We couldn't get onto the noon ferry crossing today, so we had to sit in the queue for the 13:00 sailing from Virtsu to Kuivastu. We might have done better to book in advance, which we'll now be certain to do for the return journey on Monday.

The drive over the small island of Muhu and then Saaremaa was lovely. Saaremaa is covered in thick pine and spruce forests, not to mention juniper groves. Lighthouses and windmills supposedly dot the landscape, although we've so far seen only one windmill. This is old Estonia, rustic charm at its very best.

Saaremaa is still gloriously unspoilt, the unwittingly fortuitous consequence of many decades of Soviet rule. During that era, all access to the island was strictly forbidden, thanks to the presence of an early radar system and rocket base. The encroaching tourism in the years since independence doesn't yet seem to have put much of a dent in the island. Long may it remain so.

We visited the Kuressaare's castle today, which was good fun. Unlike the previous ruins we've visited on this trip, this castle was still intact, so it was much more interesting to walk around.

One part of the castle that particularly appealed to the imagination was the courtroom, where many a poor sod was sentenced to death and summarily executed by being hurled into a shaft with ferocious lions at the foot. It sends a shiver down your spine, just thinking about it. These days, the roars of the lions from the shaft are mere recordings, but it's enough to get the idea.

Our hotel is a stone's throw from the castle, located right next to the moat. It's a beautifully charming Art Nouveau building with attractive period furnishings. Of all the settings of all the hotels we've stayed in over the years (and that's quite a few), this one ranks pretty highly in terms of picturesque appeal.

At this point, it's hard to know whether to feel sorry or happy for the Baltic countries and their relative obscurity as a travel destination. If more people knew what they were missing by not coming here, they surely would decide to come. Whilst that would provide a very welcome cash infusion for the economy, it would also bring with it the horrors of mass tourism we know and loathe from across the globe.

Estonia is a little bit bigger than the Netherlands, but has less than 10% of the population. No wonder it doesn't feel crowded here.

Torrential rain came down on us today; really torrential. I've seldom seen such heavy rain last so long. Saaremaa was besieged by this deluge for several hours.

We drove south today, to the Sõrve peninsula.

I've seen Estonia referred to as E-stonia, which is very appropriate, given how wired this country is. Or perhaps I should say how wireless Estonia is, because it seems that most of the country is covered in a grid of mostly gratis 802.11 networks. Even on the southernmost tip of the Sõrve peninsula this afternoon, I had free wi-fi access from the one small restaurant near the lighthouse.

As we ordered our lunch, the rain stopped and, urged by Sarah, I ventured outside and over to the lighthouse to take some photos of the ominous and forbidding setting. I hope I got some good ones, because this was the only opportunity today to take any landscape photos. Soon after we finished lunch, the rain started again in earnest.

Estonia's extensive wi-fi coverage, by the way, is thanks to the work of Veljo Haamer and his WIFI.ee project. Orange and black signs abound across Estonia and anywhere you see one, wi-fi access is available. Even town squares and parks display these signs, so that you can sit on a bench and check your e-mail as you relax for a moment or make your way across town from A to B. It's a commendable initiative and I wish more countries had something like this.

We headed back to Kuressaare along an unpaved coastal road that ran right along the water's edge. The views are probably great on a good day, but I could see only about 100 metres in front of the car, if that.

We leave Saaremaa tomorrow on the eleven o'clock ferry. All of the advance tickets have now been sold, but since we booked yesterday evening, we're assured of being aboard. All I have to do is get us to the port on time.

From Virtsu on the mainland, it'll be about another two hours of driving to the Estonian capital of Tallinn, where we'll spend four nights. We were originally planning only three, but the hotel we picked had a four-for-the-price-of-three deal that was too good to pass up.

The weather forecast for Tallinn isn't particularly good, but being a city, there will be things we can do indoors. And, even if it rains tomorrow, we'll be there long enough that we stand a reasonable chance of some dry spells.

Dinner was at the very sleek Chameleon, a restaurant that looks as if it would be too cool to have a children's play room inside, but surprised these patrons by doing just that. Eloïse and Lucas spent most of the meal away from us in a different room without so much as a murmur!

I should also put in a good word for the Classic, a cosy little café (or kohvik, as they're called here) on Lossi. They have good cakes, coffee and wild boar shashlik (shashlik or Шашлык, by the way, is a legacy from the Soviet days and can be found on menus throughout the Baltics).

If Rīga is the chocolate box image of a quaint, historical European city, then Tallinn must surely be the entire box, soft centres and all.

It's hard to know which superlative to wield first to describe the charm and character of this beautiful old city.

We're ensconced at the Telegraaf (nothing to do with the awful Dutch newspaper) in the old town, a sleek hotel in a great location. It even has its own parking garage, which we're making grateful use of.

We arrived at about 13:30, having made mincemeat of the sat-nav's original estimate of a 14:15 arrival. The 10, 9 and 4 roads (plus the ferry, of course) carried us from Saaremaa to Tallinn in distinctly gloomy weather, but scarcely a drop of rain fell from the skies.

Once we had checked into the hotel, I changed into long trousers and decided I'd need a jacket. This turned out to be a mistake, because no sooner had we walked a few minutes away from the hotel, than the sun came out and set about warming things up. It stayed that way all afternoon, too, once again defying the day's weather forecast.

Lunch was at Kompressor on Rataskaevu, a crêperie serving up chunky pancakes with fillings such as bacon and smoked cheese, which is exactly what I had. A hearty meal was just what was needed for an afternoon's sightseeing.

We spent the afternoon wandering around the cobbled streets of the old town. Taking photos actually became tedious. I would've been better off putting the camera in continuous shooting mode and hurling the bloody thing through the air, such was the frequency with which we were confronted by beautiful or eye-catching scenes. Bam, bam, bam; one after another I found myself wanting to record what my eyes saw and my memory would soon forget.

Tallinn has the immediate charm of Stockholm's Gamla Stan, enough backstreet cafés to give Paris a run for its money, the historic grandeur of Prague and the mediaeval atmosphere of Český Krumlov. No wonder so many foreign powers have tried to claim it for themselves.

It also has tourists: great, sauntering bunches of the buggers. Cruise ships line the harbour in the distance and, everywhere you look, tour guides, right arm raised and clutching an umbrella or numbered marker, zigzag across the streets, a pack of video camera wielding Italians, Germans or some other nationality in tow. Even American accents can be heard here.

So far, this is the only place in the Baltics where we've seen tourists in the quantities you'd expect to find in the more obvious European city destinations, such as Paris, Rome, and London. Tallinn is clearly no secret. Oh well.

Tallinn's old town is split into All-Linn, the lower town, and Toompea, the upper town. We've seen a good amount of both today, but will explore further tomorrow.

Dinner was at Vanaema Juures, whose name means Grandma's Place. We had reserved a table at this place earlier in the day and it was a good job, too, because it was completely packed when we arrived; even on a Monday evening.

Vanaema Juures serves up delicious home cooking, just like your grandmother used to make, or would have, if she'd been Estonian and a great chef. I had the wild boar in red wine sauce, which was absolutely phenomenal. Strawberries and ice-cream took care of the need for something sweet afterwards. This was possibly our best meal on the trip to date.

Four nights in Tallinn should be just about right. I'm already glad we've increased our stay from three nights, because this town clearly has a lot to offer.

We did get some rain today, but it was on and off throughout the day, so we were able to shift our day around it.

This day was all about taking it easy. After some more time in Vanalinn (Old Town), which included some time at the wool market, we did a walking tour that took us out of the historic centre, where, apparently, relatively few tourists venture.

We eventually ended up in the Kadriorg district, the site of a huge city park that goes by the same name, the presidential residence and the former palace of Peter the Great.

After cake and coffee and the superb Park Café, we started to head back towards the mediaeval cobblestoned alleys of the old town. On the way, I stopped off at a CD shop to sample some of the local sounds, while Sarah and the children continued to the hotel.

Dinner was mediaeval fare at the very touristy, but apparently also very well regarded Olde Hansa. This place actually had bear on the menu, but Sarah insisted that I not even consider it, so I didn't. The meal was good, but not prize-winning.

For dessert, we adjourned to furnishings from a bygone era and the mouthwatering treats that are Chocolats de Pierre.

I'm not sure what we'll do tomorrow, but there are a number of things still on our list. We certainly won't be bored in this city.

We spent most of the day in the Vanalinn today, the historic Old Town.

This included a climb up the 115 steps of the only remaining Gothic town hall in Europe, Raekoda on Raekoja Plats. The views over the square from the top were well worth the effort.

Later in the day, we also climbed the 258 step tower of Oleviste Kirik, St. Olaf's Church on Lai. This was once the tallest spire in the world and was once used as a surveillance centre by the KGB. Again, the views from the top reward the exertion of reaching the top, although having Eloïse in front of you is a good way to pace yourself and not get out of breath.

Before lunch, we paid a visit to the Püha Vaimu Kirik, the Holy Spirit Church. There's a clock on the facade, dating from 1684 and the tower bell is the oldest in Estonia, made in 1433. The wood-carved interior features include an altarpiece from 1483 and one of the former pastors, Johann Koell, is considered the author of the first Estonian book from 1535. So, it's safe to say that this church is steeped in history.

The highlight of the day for me was a visit to the perhaps verbosely named Museum of Occupation and of the Fight for Freedom.

The experience recalled that of our visit to the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia 1940 - 1991 and that's hardly surprising, because in both cases, the oppressors were the USSR and the German Reich.

Estonian people were subjected to the same litany of horrors as the Latvians (and no doubt the Lithuanians, too): imprisonment or internment, deportation, expropriation of property. You name it, the Soviets and, to a lesser extent, the Germans, did it to them.

Although this museum was smaller than the one in Rīga, we still didn't get to see everything. I mostly walked around, looking at the exhibits. Sarah had Lukie asleep in the sling, so she sat down and watched some of the documentaries on offer.

There are seven documentaries in total and each of them runs for approximately thirty minutes, so you'd need at least half a day to visit the museum if you plan to watch all of them. Alternatively, there's a DVD of them available from the museum, but it's very expensive at 700 kroons (≅ €47). We bought a copy anyway, because the material was so interesting.

We had dinner this evening at the very upmarket and enigmatically named Ö. Sarah, in particular, was at the edge of her comfort in having the children present at this very stylish place, but it came highly recommended and you only live once, so why not? We never go out to restaurants back home, so on holiday is our only opportunity.

The food was top notch and the children were actually very well behaved. We didn't want to push our luck, though, so we adjourned to Chocolats de Pierre again for dessert.

Tomorrow's our last day in Tallinn.

Today was our last day in Tallinn. No more breakfasts of champagne and brownie for poor old Sarah. Life is tough.

The sun shone virtually all day long as we crossed the Ts and dotted the Is around Tallinn. Four days was just right for this city and we now feel we've seen and done all we wanted to. Of course, there are enough still unpatronised kohviks to keep us sipping coffee and eating cake for the next month, but time is a commodity that is steadily depleting and so we must move on.

Tomorrow morning, we'll be up bright and early in order to catch the ferry to Helsinki. The drive itself is negligible. Take out the ferry crossing and we'll scarcely be driving three kilometres from this hotel to the next!

Our meal this evening was modern Estonian cuisine at Kaerajaan. I had the ostrich, which was delicious. From our vantage point on Raekoja plats, we watched life in the Estonian capital wind down for the day, the sun skimming across the rooftops of the Baltic sky.

Tallinn calms down after 16:00, which is when the seas of nylon tracksuit-clad septuagenarians beat a retreat to the cruise-liners that ushered them in, at which point the capital reverts to a tranquil place for a peaceful stroll.

Across the Gulf of Finland we go!

Tallink has free wireless Internet access on its Tallinn to Helsinki crossing. How cool is that?

We're somewhere in the Gulf of Finland at the moment.

The two hour crossing to Finland on the Tallink ferry was very civilised: free WiFi, a good supermarket and a clean, well-provisioned area for children to play.

We spent most of the crossing talking to a very nice Estonian woman, so the time flew by. Before we knew it, we were docked in Helsinki harbour and driving off the boat.

Even with wrong turns and having to go around the block a couple of times, today's drive was still under 10 km. Not bad, considering we started in one European capital and finished in another.

Check-in at the hotel took a little longer than usual. The deluxe room we'd booked wasn't yet ready, so we were "upgraded" to a suite. The layout of the suite was so bad, however, that it made me wonder whether we ought not to insist on being downgraded again.

In the end, that's exactly what we did, and we're now in a lovely, spacious room that looks out onto Kluuvikatu. The hotel is modern and stylish (with jet black toilet paper, no less), and the staff have been very helpful to us.

It's been about a decade since I was last in Helsinki. Some of it seems familiar, such as Kappeli, where we partook of a late lunch that had Sarah baulking at the prices after having had three weeks to become accustomed to the Baltic cost of living. Yes, we're in Finland all right.

Most of Helsinki, though (or at least the parts we've seen today), seem scarcely familiar. Even Tuomiokirkko, the Lutheran cathedral on Senaatintori (Senate Square), majestic though it may be, rings only a dim and distant bell. Such is my bad memory.

Dinner was at Café Engel on Aleksanterinkatu. Although it's just a café (albeit a lovely one), our meal there immediately became the most expensive one of the trip so far. In common with the other Nordic countries, Finland is no place for the cash-strapped, but it is a good place to rapidly acquire that status.

It's been raining all evening, but the forecast is for clearer skies tomorrow. One can but hope.

Coming after Tallinn, Helsinki is almost bound to disappoint, but we'll look for the good, ignore the bad, and judge the place on its own merit. We're spending four nights here, so there will be ample time to get (re)acquainted with the city.

We walked a long way today. The weather was gorgeous.

We started at Soviet-proportioned Rautatientori with its pleasant railway station (from where trains depart to destinations all over Finland, as well as to St. Petersburg and Moscow) and traipsed out to Hietaranta Beach. where Eloïse and Lucas played in the sand, swang on the swings and slid on the slides. I was surprised to find that Helsinki even had a beach, but it does and the children liked it, even if it wouldn't win many awards (except, perhaps, for most fag-ends per square metre)..

From the beach, we continued to Hietaniemi cemetery, which is really beautiful. If you're going to be dead and buried, it may as well be here. This place was meant to be walked in. One thing that puzzled me, though, was that the vast majority of the names on the headstones were Swedish. I'm not sure why that is.

After a late lunch at Café Ekberg, we wended our way back along Pohjoisesplanadi to Esplanadi, where people were sitting in the grass, picnicking and soaking up the sun. Ubiquitous pan-pipe blowing buskers in full Red Indian regalia attempted to woo the crowds.

We continued down to Kauppatori, beyond to majestic Uspenski Cathedral and across onto the island of Katajanokka, with its relaxed Art Nouveau neighbourhoods and peaceful waterfront views. There, Eloïse and Lucas played in another playground and soon our day was done.

I'm too tired to write much else this tonight. More tomorrow.

Another day to defy the forecasts, today was beautiful and Helsinki bathed in glorious sunshine for the duration of the day.

After breakfast, we took the ferry from Kauppatori to the island of Suomenlinna, the site of a 250 year old fortress and a suburb of Helsinki with some 850 residents.

We purchased only one adult return ticket to the island. Why? Because Sarah's was allowed to travel for free. How come? Because we had a child buggy with us and the local public transport policy dictates that buggy-pushers travel gratis.

The reason for this unparalleled generosity is that some forms of public transport (presumably buses and trams) require you to board at the back, after which you would have to abandon your buggy and child for a minute in order to walk to the front and purchase a ticket. It's deemed undesirable for a parent to do this, so buggy-pushers get a free ride; quite literally. Yes, the Finns can certainly teach the rest of us a thing or two about organising civilised society.

Suomenlinna turned out to be better than expected. The ferry journey itself was fun, but the island soon had one imaging oneself at a location far removed from the Finnish capital. It was so calm and peaceful that it seemed as if we really could have been anywhere.

All of us enjoyed the island. There was a nice little park for Eloïse and Lucas, who are both really fond of the swings at the moment.

We made a full tour of the island, had lunch and got back to Helsinki at around 16:00. We then walked to Kaivopuisto park, ate some strange ice-cream (my lemon flavoured scoop looked like a concoction of pus and mustard, and failed to adequately distance itself from the taste that thought suggested) and then chanced upon another really good playground for the children.

What must have been an hour later, we walked back into town for a delicious dinner at Tori on Punavuorenkatu, followed by coffee and cake at Café Engel again.

Today felt like a very full day and I must say, it was nice to get out of the city. Not that Helsinki is hectic; far from it, especially at this time of year. No, it's high summer and Helsinki is virtually deserted, its legions of residents having fled for more appealing resorts, leaving but a skeleton crew behind to keep the wheels of commerce and government oiled and slowly turning.

We, too, must leave Helsinki behind the day after tomorrow, so Monday is our last chance to take in any final items on the list. There aren't many, I must say. Helsinki definitely has a charm of its own, but doesn't entice and enchant me the way that, say, Stockholm does. It's actually quite reminiscent of the Swedish capital in places, but is missing the historic appeal of Gamla Stan and the older neighbourhoods.

Nevertheless, it's been well worth the time to come over here. Who knows when we'll be back this way? Finland's not exactly en route to many other destinations.

I hope the weather continues to hold up.tomorrow.

We ticked off the final item on our Helsinki to-do list today by visiting the famous Stockmann department store, which offers free, one hour babysitting for shoppers' children.

After some trepidation at the idea of entering, Eloïse went on to play happily for an hour, while we went down to the fourth floor to look at the children's clothes. Well, what else would I do? I hate shopping.

At noon, we picked up Eloïse and showed her what we had picked out for her. Happily, everything met with her enthusiastic approval. We had clothes for Lucas, too, of course, but he couldn't care less at his time of life.

With nothing essential left to do in Helsinki, we thought it would be nice to see something a bit further afield, in order to have seen more of the country on this trip than just the capital. The sun was once again blazing a trail across the Nordic sky, so we'd have been fools not to.

We therefore retrieved the car from the garage and, with bad Finnish radio keeping our spirits high, headed out along the coast to Porvoo.

Porvoo is a great little town, just over 50 km north-east of Helsinki. It has a pretty 'old town' area, at least one great café, Café Helmi, with home-made rhubarb juice, and a killer chocolate shop, Brunberg that has plenty of wares on display for you to sample before you commit to buying. I must have put on a kilo just standing there, waiting for Sarah to buy.

We had lunch in Porvoo and went on an enjoyable walking tour, picked out of the local tourist office's brochure on the town.

Tomorrow's drive takes us back across the Gulf of Finland by ferry to Tallinn, where we'll turn east and head to the tiny village of Käsmu. The weather had better be good, because there's not much to do there, but admire the scenery.

I suspect we won't have WiFi for the next couple of days, but we'll no doubt re-emerge on Thursday.

It was an early start on Tuesday, as we had the ferry to catch. After breakfast, Sarah checked out while I retrieved the car and we then made our way over to the port.

The ferry back to Tallinn was packed this time, presumably with Finns starting out on their summer holiday. In spite of the crowds, we were still able to nab our favourite spot on the cushioned benches inside the Tivoli playing area. From that vantage point, we were able to keep an eye on the children, whilst reading our guidebook.

There was a flat-screen TV playing the animated film, Cars, in either Estonian or Finnish (the spoken languages are hard to tell apart). Eloïse said that it was in Dutch, but that she couldn't understand it, because they were speaking too fast. I found that to be an interesting comment, but I'm not sure what, if anything, it reveals.

The drive east took us out through some distinctly ugly Soviet era housing on the outskirts of Tallinn. Before long, though, we were out in the countryside, speeding towards Lahemaa National Park.

We decided to stop for lunch in Võsu, a tiny village just a few kilometres from the equally tiny village of Vämsu, where we would be staying. As we pulled up, here in the middle of nowhere, I saw a Dutch minibus parked at the side of the road. You're never far from a Dutch person, no matter how far and how remote you travel.

Three tables on the patio were occupied by the bus passengers, a friendly bunch of Nijmegenaars. They, too, were touring the Baltic countries, but at a much more rapid pace than we.

The food was absolutely delicious, so I hereby heartily endorse O Kõrts for a meal, be it lunch or dinner. We were also able to park the car in full view of our table, which, with the windows wound down, enabled us to enjoy a Little Lu (as Eloïse often calls him) -free lunch. Just as importantly, Little Lu was able to catch up on some lost sleep, making him a much happier baby.

After lunch, we drove up the road to Käsmu and checked into our guesthouse,the first lodgings of this trip with no WiFi of any variety. It's also the first place we've stayed where no English was spoken, so we sputtered along in German, our ability with that language arguably better than our Estonian.

In the late afternoon, we went on a hike whose trail head was situated right outside the guesthouse's gate, which was the cue for the local mosquito population seized the opportunity to feast upon my still living carcass.

Highlights of the walk were the erratically strewn boulders along the shore, dragonflies the size of pterodactyls flying overhead, and toadstools that many a passing gnome would have been happy to park his buttocks on.

Our friend, the sun, was faithful yet another day. With little to do in the area but hike or bike, we hope his patience with us will last at least one more day.

Helsinki was fun, but it's nice to be in the middle of nowhere again. Our previous eight nights have been in two capital cities. Whilst neither could, by any stretch of the imagination, be called hectic, this more rural setting still feels like a welcome retreat. Here, the problems of the real world seem far removed.

Outside, as I write this, you could hear a pin drop, if a pin falling onto grass could make a sound. Bliss.

Our guesthouse doesn't really offer breakfast. I say 'not really', because it ostensibly does, but the proprietor didn't seem keen on the idea yesterday, so we deduced it would be better to venture out and find our own this morning.

Around these parts, that's somewhat easier said than done. Most eateries don't open until 11:00, because they service the lunch and dinner crowd, not people looking to break their fast on cereal and eggs.

Fortunately, we did eventually find a place in Võsu, which, apart from decent omelettes and sausages, also stocked that ubiquitous E-stonian commodity, WiFi.

With a full belly and caught up on e-mail, we were a mere 200 m from the beach, so it seemed like a good idea to go and play in the sand for a while. Grey clouds were gathering overhead, so we thought this might no longer be an option within an hour or two. While we were frolicking, however, the grey clouds cleared and the day was to remain sunny from that point forward.

After the beach, we drove a few kilometres up the road to Oandu. The fact that the place even has a name suggests that it's a village or at least a hamlet of some kind, but, as far as we could discern, there's not even a house there.

What there is, however, in plentiful supply, is good hiking territory. We therefore went on a short hike on a trail around some beaver dams. We saw plenty of dams, but, sadly, none of the shy little creatures that had built them.

It was then time for lunch, so we drove back up the road a kilometre or so to Altja, another of the tiny hamlets dotted around the area. We ate a lovely salmon lunch at Altja Kõrts, which I followed with the traditional Estonian dessert, kama, which is a ground mixture of barley, rye, oat and pea flour, mixed with yoghurt and some fruit juice. It's surprisingly tasty.

We followed our late lunch with another hike, this time the Old Growth Forest Nature Trail, whose starting point lay back up the road in Oandu.

This trail turned out to be the best of the trip so far (not that we've done that many), if not the best hike we've ever done. The principle reason for this was the joy in Eloïse that it provoked. She makes a real sport out of spotting each of the numbered markers along the route and then listens attentively as we read aloud the information on the accompanying signs. A simple hike thus becomes a game and adventure!

The forest really is wild around here. Brown bears, moose and lynx all roam these parts freely and I was amused to observe that the only warning given concerned the danger of falling trees. Luckily, we know how to behave if we do come across these animals (I've actually encountered bears and a moose on previous hikes), but the chances of actually doing so are slim.

Eloïse joyfully recorded the encounter of every toadstool along the way, as she firmly believes that gnomes use these for resting their hind quarters.

Other notable encounters along the 4.7 km trail were some tiny frogs and, to our great amazement and joy, a wild dear, which leapt from invisibility in the undergrowth and gave me the fright of my life, because, in the split second that I heard the animal thrash in the tall grasses before I actually saw it emerge, there was ample time to imagine it might be something less friendly than a dear.

Eloïse mentioned the deer at bedtime as the highlight of her day. It had clearly made a big impression on her.

It's fascinating to watch her grow and develop. The older she gets, the more she gains from every experience that befalls her. And. the more I bear witness to this process, the more pleasure I derive as her father. This can only mean our trips in the years to come (and, indeed, our time spent at home) will just keep getting better and better.

Tomorrow, we leave Lahemaa National Park and continue east to Narva, located right on the border with Russia.

We're at the border with Russia, quite literally. It's just a few hundred metres away from our hotel. An endless stream of cars, lorries and pedestrians make their way in both directions across the so-called friendship bridge.

On this, the Estonian side, of the Narva River, Narva Castle stares defiantly across the water at Russia. On the other side, the fortress of neighbouring Ивангород (Ivangorod) stands in proud opposition.

Narva is a funny old place, more Russian than Estonian. 97% of the population is Russian-speaking and it's no coincidence that English is a virtually unknown language here.

This is apparently the most easterly point of Europe and we're now closer to St. Petersburg than to Tallinn. As we watch people crossing the border checkpoint with the accurate yet understated text, Россия, embellishing the portal, the proximity of this gateway teases and taunts us with the lure of the unexplored.

Narva is a bit of a relic. Signs of the Soviet era still abound here, including modern architecture so hideous that causing revulsion in the beholder must surely have topped a list of anti-aesthetic objectives.

That's not to say that the town is without charm, however. The castle is a lot of fun to visit and the grounds provide gorgeous views across the river to Ivangorod. There's also a small beach, popular with the locals, and people stand on both sides of the river, angling for fish. Although the beach itself would win few prizes, the sand is fine and golden, and the backdrop of Ivangorod fortress on the Russian side just can't be beaten. Where else in the world is there a castle located directly in front of a beach?

The close proximity of the Estonian and Russian castles to one another is also unique in the world. They are literally just an arrow's flight apart, now a photogenic delight, but at one time surely an extremely unnerving fact of life, to have one's foe so close at hand.

Once again, we've run out of clean clothes, so we had to find a laundrette and drop off about a dozen kilos of sweaty underpants and T-shirts. Yes, it's not only delicious repasts and soaking up the sun when you're out on the road. The laundry needs to get done, too.

The castle was the one absolutely essential attraction here, so tomorrow will be a lazier day, probably beginning at the beach, after which we'll venture further afield in town.

By the way, spare a thought for the lot of the lowly lorry driver. While we were still about 5 km outside of Narva, we noticed lots of lorries parked at the side of the road. After a few hundred metres of this stationary convoy, I realised that this was the back of the queue for lorries wanting to cross the border into Russia. You could lose 24 hours sitting in that queue. It's an emphatic reminder, as if any were needed, of the stupidity of political borders.

By land, we're now about 2300 km from home, which is by far the furthest from home we've ever been in our own car. Indeed, it's odd to think that we've driven the same car from the west coast of Ireland last year to the Estonian border with Russia this year. I think we've driven our car in about 20 countries in the three and a half years that we've had it, a fact that surprises me immensely, as the number has quietly accumulated without my being aware of it.

Another day in Narva, perhaps the hottest day of our trip so far; a real scorcher.

We'd promised Eloïse an immediate visit to the beach today, so we had to make good on that pledge. After an altogether uninspired breakfast at our hotel, we wandered down to the beach via the town hall (virtually the only old building left standing after the town was bombarded into near-oblivion during World War II) and some of the bastions.

The sun was in just the right place for some polarised wide-angle shots of the friendship bridge, spanning the divide between Narva Castle on the Estonian side and Ivangorod Fortress.on the Russian. I then joined Sarah and the children on the beach.

Lukie soon tired and had to go in the sling for forty winks, but Eloïse played for ages in the water. It was busy at the beach, but will probably be even busier at the weekend.

We left the beach and headed for the Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ, a Russian Orthodox cathedral. The route to the cathedral led us through Soviet-era tenement blocks in various states of dilapidation, their main entrance doors resembling prison cell doors with keypads. Three old ladies with headscarves sat chatting on a bench outside one of these monstrosities, but declined my request for a photo. A pity.

That marked the end of the things we wanted to see in Narva, so we went back to the hotel and drove the twelve or so kilometres to Narva-Jõesuu, a beachside resort that used to be very popular during the days of the tsarist empire. It's still pretty popular today, judging from the hundreds of blobs of sunburned cellulite stretching as far as the eye could see.

After a fairly light lunch, we made for the beach for Eloïse and Lucas's second session of sand-frolicking today. I was gobsmacked by the quality of the beach, whose golden sand was about as fine and powdery as you could hope to see this side of a Pacific island. Estonia really does have some fantastic beaches.

Our fun on the beach over, we went back to the car and drove back along the river that separates Estonia from Russia. A Soviet tank stands at the side of the road along this route as a monument of some kind.

Back in Narva, we decided it would be fun to visit a couple of the shopping malls around here. Narva has lots of them, in contrast to other Estonian towns; it must be a Russian thing.

In fact, Narva really is like no other Estonian town we've been to. In the other towns we've visited on this trip, many, if not all, of the Soviet-era eyesores have been torn down. They hark back to a time that many would rather forget, or at least consign to the dim recesses of their mind.

Here, though, the choice seems to have been made to either keep on using them or simply let them decay. If they were ghastly when they were in active use, you can only imagine what years of neglect have done for their aesthetic value. Registering in one's perception as strongly as they do, albeit it at the wrong end of the beatific scale, they become as worthy of photographic retention as sights that go more easily on one's optic nerve.

The malls failed to impress, although they did contain a collection of clutter and tat quite distinct from what we normally see at home, so they were interesting for that, at least.

It was another day of спасибо and Пожалуйста, these being just about the only words of Russian I know (two more than Sarah, at least!), but it's good fun trying to decipher the Cyrillic on signs and menus.

Dinner was at the surprisingly good Salvadore, where I topped off my delicious main course of lamb with something that called itself Tiramisu, wasn't quite, but still tasted nice.

Sarah went back to the hotel to bath the children, while I headed out to tank up the car for tomorrow's journey and pick up our nice, clean laundry.

We drive to Tartu tomorrow, which will be our final destination in Estonia.

This also marks the turning point in our trip. In Narva, we're at our furthest from home. Each new destination from this point forward will bring us a little bit closer to Amsterdam.