Ooops, it's been awhile

Thursday August 14th:
I'm behind a few days but I've been to busy to write (ahem, lazy). Anyway, Thursday we woke up the earliest yet (9am) to go have free breakfast at our hotel. Then we decided to explore the old part of Tallinn. We found giant flowers (that I wasn't supposed to take pictures of but didn't notice the signs until later), plenty of touristy souvenir shops, and lots of pretty buildings. We even found the church that Jonna had never seen. After seeing what we could we headed back toward the hotel. I was able to leave my backpack and laptop in a safe area instead of lugging it around all day after checking out. loved it! We shopped around the mall connected to our hotel then in the H&M across the street and other shops. We found this great restaurant for lunch but the system was not well explained and took ages. You decided what you wanted (pizza, pasta, salad/antipasto) then stood in line and they made it fresh in front of you. cool, except the pasta took ages. they didn't have precooked portions of the pastas ready so we waited for each meat to cook, vegetables to be added, sauces, spices, pasta to cook, stirred together, etc. Probably would have jumped in the pizza line if I realized how long it was going to take. At least with pizza you could go sit down after ordering and wait. The food was good but I couldn't eat all of mine. A shame, I couldn't carry around the leftovers either. We shopped a bit more then headed back to the hotel to grab my bags.

After leaving the hotel we went toward the ship and the alcohol shop. Alcohol is much cheaper in Estonia because of the super high taxes in Finland and you don't have to pay duty/tax on what you bring back on the ship (unless it's a TON). So, Jonna and I carried a total of 4 24 packs of cider cans and 1.5 liters of vodka between us along with our shopping and overnight stuff and snacks. You think it's not too heavy and then after walking a bit to the ship it's awful. We were able to store everything in a locker for the ride though! Amazingly the rain held off all day until we were on the way back. Jonna's brother, Henry, picked us up when we got off the ship. I hated getting off though because people all want to be the first off but THEY ARE SO SLOW! If you have a stroller or you're old or you walk slow then you need your own lane. People just spread out and crawled off the ship and we couldn't stop but it was an awkward pace and everyone was carrying tons of heavy stuff (mostly alcohol). Gah. They don't even move over if they see you're trying to move faster. Get it together people! Britain does this with the underground elevators. right side if you're slow, left if  you're walking/hurrying. Johanna mentioned that yeah, that's kinda just how Finnish people are. It drove me crazy. Anyway, we went to Jonna's house in Sipoo, then drove the car back to her place in Helsinki.