On Saturday we saw the Tower of London from the outside. Today we came back, bought tickets and went inside. Ingrid was a bit sceptical at first but agreed to give it a try, especially when she saw the informational signs about Henry VIII and his six wives. (Her love of Hamilton has led her to listen to other musicals as well, including Six, about those six wives. “Divorced, beheaded, died. Divorced, beheaded, survived.” Musical + Tower = history coming to life.)

There was a lot to be seen and done there, enough to keep us occupied for half a day: the history of the Royal Mint, exhibitions of all kinds, the various walls and towers themselves, and then of course the crown jewels. The queue for those snaked back and forth across the entire courtyard but moved quite quickly so the wait didn’t feel as long as it was. And the crown jewels are quite magnificent to see. The oldest ones are massive gold and big colourful jewels; the newest are all edges and sparkle.

Our final afternoon activity was a tour on the London Eye. The tour itself was half an hour, but booking, getting the tickets and then queueing to get onto the thing took forever, so the whole endeavour literally filled our afternoon. It was a nice and relaxing experience. Too bad they’ve wrapped Big Ben in scaffolding though.

After two late nights – one flying, one at the theatre – we were tired today. Ingrid slept late, and we took it easy during the day. More bus rides, less walking.

We took a bus to town. alked around Covent Garden, watched some street performers, walked to Leicester Square and Chinatown, walked along Pall Mall to Buckingham Palace. Took a bus to Harrods, admired the food hall and the chocolates and cakes and teas, and the jewelry and handbags with silly prices.

The highlight of the day was afternoon tea at Paul’s. Ingrid has recently taken up tea-drinking (mostly rooibos and spice tea) and a real, proper afternoon tea was a key item on her wish list. Paul’s is maybe more French than English, serving little brioche buns instead of sandwiches on their tea trays, but the whole thing did involve tea and multiple cakes and that’s what matters.

By then it was evening and we took a bus back to the hotel and rested while watching Sherlock Holmes (the one with Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman).

We’re in London! Seeing Hamilton!

First we slept, though, to recover from yesterday. Finally I had to wake Ingrid because I was starving hungry. The hotel breakfast looked decent – but since it was charged separately, I was rather aware of the cost, and decided that we could get an equally nice breakfast for half the price at the nearest Pret.

Apart from Hamilton, our plans for this day were vague and loose. I thought we could just see a bit of London, so we simply walked out of the hotel and headed south towards the Thames. This took us past not just a Pret but also the Gherkin, various other cool buildings, and then the Tower of London. Ingrid didn’t feel like walking for hours in a castle, so we just looked at it from the outside.


She was more interested in Tower Bridge – it’s pretty iconic! – so we went inside and looked at all the photos as well as the old engines. The view from up on the walkways is pretty nice as well. It really brings home the contrast of central London – centuries-old buildings side by side with gleaming, curved skyscrapers in glass and steel.

We walked westwards along the Thames, taking in the Globe theatre, Borough market, Millenium bridge etc on the way. Lunch was fish and chips near St. Paul’s.

One of the items on Ingrid’s list of places to see and things to do was Platform 9¾ so after lunch we took the Tube to King’s Cross. We had heard and read that there’s a baggage trolley there, halfway into the platform wall. What we were not prepared for was the commercialization of it. There is a Harry Potter shop right next to it, with a queue just to get in. And another big queue of people waiting to stand next to that baggage trolley and get their photo taken by a professional, with enough of a crowd there to warrant multiple security staff to wrangle them all. Eugh. The cost of globalization and cheap travel is that everything Instagrammable is totally overrun.

In the afternoon, we went to the London Dungeon. (No photos from there because it was dark from beginning to end.) I had expected something museum-like but it was more like a series of short theatre performances, with the crowd walking from one vignette to another. From Guy Fawkes, through the plague and the Great Fire, to Jack the Ripper and so on. Overall, not bad.

Dinner was conveyor belt sushi at Yo! Sushi. This was mixed with nostalgia even more than all the other things we’ve walked past. One of the very first times I had sushi was at Yo! together with Eric. Either their quality is not what it was, or maybe it’s my palate that has changed, but I found the food less flavourful than I remembered.

Then some queueing, and finally, the grand finale of the evening – Hamilton, at the Victoria Palace theatre. We were there early to give Ingrid ample time in the gift shop, and she was overjoyed.

She was even more overjoyed by the performance itself. And I have to agree – it was fabulous. I’ve heard it on Spotify enough times (god knows!) to know what it sounds like, but hearing and seeing it live was a whole different experience. I’m glad that Ingrid is such a fan because without her I wouldn’t be here.

When the performance ended, my first thought was that if only we still lived in London – we could come back and see it again.

Ingrid and I are off for our three-day trip to London to see Hamilton, the musical, spending a good chunk of today getting ourselves there. Train to Stockholm, bus to Skavsta, flight to Stansted, train to Liverpool Street station… Hours and hours of sitting around either being transported or waiting for the next phase of transportation. And we won’t reach our hotel until past midnight.

There is a hiking trail at Kauksi. We walked the trail and we ate blueberries and had fun. But none of it could compare to the beach.

Empty and flat. Endless.

Even though the weather was cold, the children played for hours. There were shallows where the water barely covered the sand, and a lagoon with warmer water, both of which offered great conditions for digging – and for photography.

We only left because of the threatening thunderclouds that appeared in the early afternoon. A speedy hike back to the cars saved us just in the nick of time; the rain came pouring down while we were driving back.

Our annual visit to Otepää adventure park with a bunch of friends and kids. Ingrid on all five trails; Adrian on three; all three of us on the ziplines.

Rain seemed again to be imminent several times but never actually materialized.

Ingrid doing the “Tarzan leap”:

The skies continue to threaten us with rain so we looked for indoor activities today. We went to the Palamuse school museum with my father and his wife.

This museum is built in and around an old parish school, which is famous in Estonia because of a book & movie (“Kevade”) that takes place here. We started planning this visit with my (step)parents already some months ago. I read “Kevade” with Adrian in the spring so that he would understand all the references and know what the story is about.


We visited both the schoolroom with its benches and blackboard etc, and the rooms where the parish clerk / school headmaster lived – bedroom, kitchen, living room etc. In the schoolroom Ingrid practised writing with a nib pen and ink. Adrian tried writing on slate, and ringing the school bell. Meanwhile I browsed old schoolbooks. I loved the maths problems, very practically oriented!

The kitchen maid gets a salary of 96 rubles a year; after 8 months of service she left her job and got 29 rubles from her master. How much salary had she withdrawn during the year?

A farmer sold 8 chetverts of wheat and 12 chetverts of rye, for the wheat he got 72 rubles. How much did he get for the rye, if 9 chetverts of rye costs the same as 5 chetverts of wheat?

There was also a modern annex with an exhibition that has information about the book, schools in Estonia in the late 19th/early 20th century, the history of parish schools in Estonia, etc. Quite interesting and well-presented, I thought. The annex also had hands-on exhibits, based mostly on memorable scenes from the book. You can spin Toots’ red wooden globe and find all the landmarks on it, and dig through all the stuff in his pockets, and climb the pantry shelves to get to the “Lati pats” wine bottles.

In the afternoon we did a quick tour of Tartu’s latest and greatest graffiti paintings.

In Tartu. In the afternoon & evening our friend group hung out in the garden of one of said friends. In addition to three bunches of children of various ages, there was also a young, very friendly playful dog.

Ingrid was very hesitant to begin. She doesn’t like dogs jumping up on her, and she definitely doesn’t like them licking her and getting dog slobber on her face. Being young and fond of people, and frankly not very disciplined, of course this dog greeted us all by immediately jumping and licking all over us.

Neither Ingrid nor Adrian have much experience with dogs and don’t know what to expect, or how to read a dog’s mood. What if it bites? So it’s natural to be cautious around a large dog like this. But the others clearly had a lot of fun playing with the dog, so Ingrid hovered there indecisively, torn between wanting to play and not quite daring to. As the evening passed, she dared more and more.

This year’s song festival was the festival’s 150th jubilee. I can’t say whether it was grander than the “ordinary” ones, I haven’t been to enough of these to have anything to compare to. But it was pretty darn impressive. 100,000 people on the festival grounds, 30,000 performers and 70,000 in the audience. Around the 100,000 person mark, ticket sales were simply stopped for security reasons.

I heard that there were plenty of people who had come from afar and hoped to buy tickets at the gate, and were then turned away. Initially the weather forecast had promised really crappy weather, so people had made other plans and then changed them last minute.

The forecast promised not just rain all day long, but pouring rain all weekend, and the days before and after. The grounds would have been a morass of mud in that case! But the closer we got to the event itself, the less rain the forecasts contained, and in the end we didn’t get a single drop. It was pretty cold though. We’re not used to 12 degree weather after our week in Mallorca.

Even with the ticket sales stopped, the grounds were absolutely packed. We sat up at the very back like last year, and even up there it was cramped. Luckily we were early and had no trouble finding space for our picnic blankets. But towards the end, we had to pull in our blankets to make space.

After barely two days at home, we’re off again, this time to Estonia. I had initially planned for more rest between the two trips, but due to hotel availability one of them had to be rescheduled, so there we are. If we want to squeeze three trips into a single summer vacation, there isn’t an awful lot of time left over for other things.

Tomorrow we’ll be attending the song festival, so instead of heading straight to Tartu as we usually do, we stay in Tallinn for the weekend. Today we strolled around Tallinn’s old town, which we haven’t done in many years. The town was was full of visitors for the song festival, and plenty of foreign tourists as well. Just like Prague, and Valldemossa. I wonder if central Stockholm is the same.



Tallinn is all about medieval cobbled streets, and churches and towers and walls. We sampled some of each, and even toured defensive tunnels under the walls.

Having been under the earth, we climbed up into Oleviste church tower, which – back in the 16th century – used to be the tallest building in Europe. Or maybe the whole world, I can’t remember for certain.



Lunch at Tallinn’s market hall was a nice surprise. The range of eateries was much wider and more varied than I had dared to hope, and so were the choices of vegetarian food.