We’re on our way to Japan! I am so excited.

This is a bit of a dream trip for Ingrid and myself. We’ve both wanted to see Japan for years, but it has never seemed feasible. Mostly because of the cost, but also because of school etc.

Now Ingrid is old enough to earn her own money, and has been working and saving up all autumn (in addition to what she had been able to set aside from her job at the cafe). She had been thinking of doing a long Interrail vacation in Europe, but then found out just how advantageous the SEK/JPY exchange rate is right now and changed her plans. Initially she was going to do this on her own, but when I asked if I could join her, she said yes, so we’re going together.

We’re at very different stages of our lives, but in surprisingly similar financial situations – on a tight budget – so our preferences and priorities line up very well. Cheap flights, and the cheapest accommodation that gives us clean beds and a private bathroom. Two-week group trips to Japan start at about 45,000 SEK per person, and that’s without most meals; we expect our total cost per person, including meals and shopping, to come in at half of that at most. That’s less than I’ve paid for a one-week guided ski tour.

Ingrid has done all the heavy lifting in terms of planning: flights, dates, hotels, overall itinerary. Going on a custom vacation without having to do the majority (if not all) of the planning is a luxury I’ve not experienced in many years. That’s another thing that has made this previously impossible trip possible: Ingrid being between jobs and having ample time for planning and research.

This will be amazing.

Had breakfast at Grounded again, even though a breakfast buffet was included in our hotel stay. The buffet was just like the hotel itself: clean, tidy, nothing wrong with it, but very much on the budget end of the scale. For a hotel room, I don’t mind that at all. All I want is a clean room in a safe building, with decent beds. The beds and pillows here were actually really good – many more expensive hotels opt for too-soft everything, and this place had nice, firm ones. But a low-budget breakfast, with the cheapest possible sliced bread and sandwich stuff, and only water and coffee to drink, no juice, is not for me. Even the boiled eggs somehow managed to taste really cheap. If the food isn’t appetizing, I struggle to make myself eat.

The rest of the morning we spent at the British Museum.

This time we hadn’t booked any tickets in advance, but had no trouble getting in.

There were quite a lot of people, but they were unevenly distributed. There might be a dense crowd in front of a popular exhibit one moment, only for them all to somehow disappear minutes later and leave us mostly on our own.

Just like at the NHM, we wandered wherever our fancy took us, and looked at whatever we felt like at that moment, without any particular focus. This meant a lot of old Egypt, but also the Parthenon marbles, Mesoamerica, Iron Age Britain, and China.

I have mixed feelings about the collections at the British Museum. On the one hand – amazement and gratefulness that we have all these unique, priceless artefacts from thousands of years ago. That they have been excavated and preserved and exhibited, and that we have learned so much from them. It’s mind-boggling, when I stop to think about it, that we have detailed records about an individual dead person from thousands of years ago, and we know who they where, what they did, how they died, what they were buried with, and why.

That we have examples of writing from five thousand years ago, and that we have been able to decipher it, and we know how much this merchant owed to that one, or what a mother was writing to their son. That the Rosetta stone was created, and survived, and could be used to decode Egyptian hieroglyphs.

On the other hand… the imperialism and ruthless plundering and the complete disregard for the wishes of the people whose history this is, that enabled this collection.

One could stay here for days and keep discovering more amazing things about the history of human civilization. We could only stay a few hours, though, since we had a flight to catch in the afternoon.

Harrods, V&A, Natural History Museum, food.

We started the day by checking off another food-related wish: an English breakfast, with hash browns, baked beans, mushrooms, sausages, etc., at Grounded. No black pudding, though. I wondered why that was, and realized later that it’s because the food at the café was all halal, and I don’t think you can make black pudding without pork blood.

I am not interested in any part of an English breakfast, really, so I had Eggs Florentine – I like poached eggs but never quite managed to get the hang of making, so whenever we have brunch at a restaurant (which happens maybe once or twice a year) I let them make me poached eggs.

The forecast promised more rain today than yesterday, even though the forecast has been much downgraded from the 18 mm that was promised for today just a week ago, so we had mostly indoors plans. First: a circuit of Harrods, for Adrian.

We had a bit of an awkward time to fill between Harrods and our early-afternoon slot at the Natural History Museum. (Timed tickets, again.) I took us to the Victoria & Albert Museum. Partly because of convenience – it’s right next door to the NHM – but also because it’s a lovely museum. There’s something for everyone there.

I’d be happy to wander through any and all parts of it, so I let Adrian’s interests guide us, while stopping to look whenever we ran into anything interesting on our way. We ambled past British decorative arts 1760–1900, then a bit of ironwork, to architecture. Down, a brief tour through the Cast Courts, and on to lunch.

Museum restaurants these days usually serve great food, having to compete for visitors’ attention against all sorts of other attractions. The lunch at the V&A café was surprisingly disappointing. The food in and of itself wasn’t bad, but nothing exciting either. The process of getting it was awkward, with flows of people crossing checkout queues, nowhere to rest your tray while queueing, and truly horribly noisy dining rooms. Sumptuous, yes, stylish, yes – but not at all pleasant. I guess it may have been nice a hundred and fifty years ago with half the number of tables, or something.

Adrian needed a top-up because his lunch portion wasn’t large enough, so he bought a cinnamon bun – which must have been the world’s worst cinnamon bun ever, for seven pounds – and we went out into the courtyard to rest our senses.

After a browse through the museum shop, we crossed the street to the Natural History Museum. Started with a tour through their garden, with a bronze cast of their famed Diplodocus skeleton (which was apparently technically challenging to make), surrounded with plants similar to what was around during the era of the Diplodocus.

Passed the impressive skeleton of a blue whale inside.

Instead we went to see the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition, which had opened just two weeks earlier. It’s an annual exhibition, but I haven’t seen it since 2007.

I would have expected Adrian to want to see more skeletons and such, but he opted for geology. I don’t know if I’ve ever visited the crystals and minerals hall of the NHM. It was astoundingly expansive. Several metres of sulphur in various shapes, case after case of copper-base minerals… Crystals, gemstones, natural chunks of pure metallic gold, you name it.

For dinner today we made our way to Chinatown for dim sum. I was too tired to spend much time and energy on choosing a restaurant, so we just picked the first one that looked decent. It turned out to be, indeed, decent.

The Tower, the Eye, comic books and Halloween cake.

I booked us rooms at a hotel very close to where I used to live, near Aldgate East. Far enough from the touristy sites to be reasonable in price, and an area I still feel roughly familiar with. There were similarly-priced places in West London, but I couldn’t judge whether the area would be reasonably safe and clean or not.

In the morning we had tickets to the Tower of London. Most major sites require advance booking of timed tickets these days, and the Tower is no exception. The Tower was walking distance from the hotel, and it was surprisingly not raining at all. But first, a quick stop by the building where I used to live. It’s still there and looks more or less like before, except the building opposite our apartment gaining a few floors and blocking what used to be our view. Not that it matters anymore.

Then through St Katherine’s Docks to the Tower. Getting there early in the day was the right choice – there were no crowds at all. Wise from previous experience, I took us straight to the Crown Jewels, which I knew would gain massive queues later in the day.

The crown jewels themselves are almost unreal. Royal crowns encrusted with hundreds of priceless jewels, giant diamonds. Orbs and sceptres and whatnot. Unfortunately but understandably there’s no photography allowed in there.

We spent a couple of hours wandering around the Tower itself, visiting the various exhibitions, checking out old armour, reading about the menagerie that used to be housed here, etc etc.

If I was utterly filthy rich, I wouldn’t mind having a castle of my own, with plenty of picturesque passages and spiral staircases and wrought-iron details.

It was nearing lunchtime when we felt done with the Tower. On Adrian’s “to do” list for London was proper English fish and chips. Instead of a pub, we headed for Borough Market. It is – like most things – much more touristy than it used to be, but I still like the vibe.

I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to eat. Nothing sounded quite right, until I saw this risotto place, and immediately knew that that was what I wanted for lunch. It was delicious.

The fish was good but greasy, Adrian said. The mushy peas were the best part of the meal.

The ergonomics of eating on a bench were so-so.

Next up: comic books. We browsed comics in the basement of Gosh! Comics…

… and then browsed some more at Forbidden Planet.

By now it had been a couple of hours since lunch, and we needed an afternoon snack. I wanted a smoothie, Adrian wanted good cake. Both were willing to consider ice cream instead. We wandered around in the Neal Street and Covent Garden area, Googled, still couldn’t quite find anything that we really liked. Finally we ran across a cake shop that immediately pulled us in with amazing-looking Halloween-themed cakes in the window, called L’ETO.

And they had smoothies as well! Smoothies seem to have a strong healthy eating vibe in London – every single one had some fad food in them. This green one sounded the fruitiest, even though it had kale in it. Tasted less detox-y than it looked.

The cakes looked even more amazing up close. Adrian’s was called “Feel the beat” and was decorated with an anatomically correct heart (as far as I could judge). The inside (raspberry and pistachio) was good but not amazing – could have more flavour, he said. We’ve been spoiled by delicacies we get at Spånga Konditori.

My “Poison Apple” had a shiny outside and a core of ginger spiced apple compote inside.

We topped off the day with a twilight ride on the London Eye. Eye-wateringly expensive, but not quite so bad that I would skip it

London at night looks pretty awesome.

Adrian and I are on a short break in London.

I went with Ingrid six years ago (to see saw Hamilton and various sights). Now it’s Adrian’s turn.

The weather forecast promises rain for all of our four days here, although the prognosis has been improving the closer we get. Just a few days ago, the forecast for Friday and Saturday was torrential downpour; now it’s down to just fairly rainy. It was raining as we got to our hotel, but the afternoon was supposed to be one of a few dry-ish periods, so we headed out to see the town. To get the proper London experience, we took a double-decker bus from East London through the City to Trafalgar Square.

Saw Big Ben and Westminster Abbey; walked past Whitehall and a guard change, then onwards through St James Park. Debated whether the large white birds we saw in the distance were really pelicans, which seemed unlikely. Adrian argued that they were swans, but the shape was all wrong. It was getting dim and the birds weren’t posing very well, but Google confirmed that there are indeed pelicans in St James Park.

Buckingham palace, then along Piccadilly to Chinatown.

Tons of tourists everywhere. It’s autumn break in more places than Stockholm, I guess, although a lot of the tourists were not of an age to be there for a school break. I wonder if there is any space for locals left at all in central London. It definitely wasn’t like this when I lived here. I am contributing to the problem myself, and this does rather confirm my general preference for holidaying in less popular spots, outside of big cities.

We stopped by Fortnum & Mason on our way, and it is now more of a tourist attraction than a department store. Hysterically garish, rather crowded. Worth it, though – I now have an authentic English Christmas pudding for this Christmas!

This trip was for Adrian’s sake maybe even more than mine (although I do love London) and one of his wishes was to eat typical British food. We had Pret sandwiches for lunch, and ate dinner at an Indian restaurant in East London. (That one was too dim for photos.)

No afternoon tea, but we did treat ourselves to very decadent donuts at Donutelier

It’s the end of October and still warm enough to sit outside, even for me.

Near miss #1: Adrian and I are going to London for a few days during autumn break, which is this week, and I was this close to missing the fact that you now need a permit to enter the UK. I know they’re out of the EU but for years that didn’t actually mean anything for travel, and somehow I’d missed that this had changed.

The confirmation email from airline even mentioned it, but the new permit thing is called an ETA – a most unfortunate naming choice, I have to say. As I skimmed the email, I saw the term in passing, naturally interpreted it as “Estimated Time of Arrival” in the context of a flight booking, and didn’t pay any more attention to it.

Today I finally noticed it for real and had a minor bout of panic because it can apparently take days to get an ETA (“Electronic Travel Authorization”, why couldn’t they just call it a visa) and we don’t have that many days. Spent a good chunk of the afternoon going through an online application process only to realize, when my payment didn’t go through, that I had landed on a scam website and had to start all over on the real site.

The process required photos and face scans and scans of the passport and whatnot. I got the applications in just before Adrian had to leave for his week at Eric’s, and thankfully got an approval back within 10 minutes, so our trip was saved.

Near miss #2: Due to the ETA panic I nearly forgot the fact that I had a concert ticket for this evening, and almost missed a concert with Grigori Sokolov. Missing it wouldn’t have been quite as sad as missing a London trip, but still, I’m glad I remembered it in the last minute. Beethoven and Brahms. Just the thing I needed to get my adrenaline levels back to normal again.

Buying Estonian candy is a necessary part of a trip to Estonia.

Likewise, eating Estonian cake. This was a sea buckthorn cake with cream cheese and chocolate.

We spent the day at Kapsta with my father and his wife.

Made our traditional home-made sushi lunch.

Enjoyed lunch out in the gazebo tent since the weather remains horribly hot.

Went for a walk in the early evening when the temperature had cooled a bit. Still 25 degrees but at least it’s not 29 any more.

My father’s back is in a bad enough shape that he’s probably not going to be taking any more walks in his life.

There are no pea fields this year. Beans and wheat instead.

A hot and rainy day. Had the weather been better, we might have gone to the adventure park in Otepää, like we do must summers. Now we chose indoor climbing instead – or bouldering, to be more precise. “We” here being the next generation (Ingrid, Adrian, and my Estonian friends’ kids) and me. The rest of the older generation were all either working, or not the climbing kind of people. Occasionally I feel a bit weird, being the only mum in a group that’s otherwise mostly teenagers and twenty-somethings and one brave nine-year-old. But I’m young at heart, eh?

The first room had the traditional kind of bouldering wall with colour-coded routes going crossways and sideways. Then we found the other room, which had a series of twenty-odd competition routes. The first couple were easy, the next few were doable, and beyond that they got more and more bizarre. It’s hard to even picture someone climbing some of them.

In the evening we went paddleboarding. Or “SUP riding”, which in Estonian sounds identical to “soup riding”.

There were heavy showers earlier in the day and heavy clouds even now; even some warnings of thunder. Thunder would have forced us to cancel; heavy rain would have been unpleasant. In the end we were lucky to get neither.

We had a safety and technique lecture on the shore, and then we were allowed on the boards and the water. Initially we were all wobbly and stayed on our knees, while swarming in the little bay we started in.

We left the bay and started paddling our way up the Emajõgi river. When we had worked up a little bit of speed, it didn’t take long for us to find our balance and stand up, like the name suggests you’re supposed to. It took longer for the knees and legs to stop shaking slightly from all the balancing that was going on.

The stand-up paddling was OK, but most of us concluded after a while that the standing-up part was rather unnecessary. You get much more leverage and control when you’re closer to the water. Canoes just make sense. Some of us went back to kneeling; many sat cross-legged.

I was all set to be camera-less during this activity, but the life jackets turned out to have a zippered chest pocket which fit my phone, and I had a little waterproof bag that also fit my phone, so I could take photos after all. I struggle to get the exposure right on the phone – in many non-standard lighting situations the photos come out way too dark and I need to adjust them a lot afterwards. But I’m glad I have these.