A Little Island R&R

After the craziness of Stockholm and hitting Estonia running in Tallin, we decided to spend a few days away from the city in Kuressare, Estonia. Kuressare is located on the island of Saaremaa, considered by many to be an untouched (by Soviet influence back in the day) part of Estonia.

We spent our three days sleeping in, walking around the cute town (only about 14,000 people live in Kuressare), renting bikes and exploring the outdoors (they have an amazing nature preserve and evidently it's quite the spot for bird watching) and just soaking in normal day to day life in Estonia. We also were lucky enough to stay at the Piibelehe Puhkemaja, a holiday home run by Aime and Viljar. (Thanks again to Danielle and Ryan for the recommendation)We lived the high life with a junior suite (still only about 40 euros/night) which had it's own porch and cooking area. As a result, evenings were spent cooking up cheap dinners, playing cribbage and watching the night slowly take hold. Like this. (We did have our first casualty here. Becca woke up the first morning with her right eye swollen shut. Brian was just grateful that it wasn't black and blue, so she couldn't blame it on him. Never did figure out what bit her or what happened, but we spent the first morning icing it and waiting for the antihystimines to take effect so that she could see enough to go exploring)

No real amazing pictures or highlights; just a few days spent relaxing and just kicking back enjoying Estonia and it's people. Well I guess the only highlight was the SWAT team worthy moves Brian had to make to ditch a bee stalking him during our bike day. No pictures of that unfortunately...

Next is a 6 hour bus ride to Latvia's capital of Riga for an overnight stay and then on to Segulda, Latvia for a few days of hiking in Latvia's castle country.