Lofoten Islands

With our uni work (almost) finished, we decided to jump in Bert (what we named our car) and travel to the beautiful Lofoten Islands. An archipelago inside the arctic circle in Norway, it is like being on the edge of the world.

Bert!

Along for the journey were Matt and Sarah, our American buddies. 10 hours of driving later, and we were cruising along roads like this:

It was spectacular.

That night, it was a bit cloudy, but that didn't stop us having our first midnight sun. I think the strangest thing was that after living in Lulea, it didn't seem strange at all to have sun at midnight.

On the beach in the midnight sun.

The next day, we headed to the end of the islands, to a town simply called Å. We had a great time climbing the sides of the mountains at the end of the road.

In the afternoon, we were driving home when disaster struck. The spare tyre, which was already on our car, popped and we were left stranded with no tyre to replace it with. Whats more, we had a jack but no wrench. Luckily, we were only 500 meters from a town, and the first shop was a mechanic. He changed the flat we had in the boot, and we were in business.

There are worse places to have broken down.

With Bert running beautifully again, we headed for a town called Henningsvaer. It was typical of the towns in Lofoten and I think this photo sums in up perfectly:

Henningsvaer.

That night, we had proper midnight sun!

It was a great trip with amazing scenery, good company, and the best car ever!

For all those following at home. Bert is currently broken and we don't know if he will run again.

Russia

Dad was here for a holiday and we thought we should do something special. So after a huge fight with the Russian embassy, we went to Russia (2 weeks ago, but we've been busy).

More specifically, we went to St Petersburg, a city that only gets 40 sunny days a year. We were there for 4 of them! Maybe it was the sun, driving people crazy, but St Petersburg was buzzing. The streets were packed with young people out shopping, walking, and just generally enjoying life.

Everywhere we went or even looked, the place was full of history. Every corner seemed to be an amazing church, palace, or cafe in which someone famous had died. I've never been somewhere so dense with historic places and we spent lots of time just wandering the streets soaking it all in.

For the four days, we had guides called Oxana and Valentine who drove us around and showed us all the best sites. We had a fantastic time with them, but undoubtedly the best part of our guide experience was the concierge at our hotel who organised everything for us. Stanislav supposedly worked at the hotel, but we only saw him there once, and that was at midnight. Having organised the first guided day at midnight they day before over phone, we first met Stanislav the next day when he appeared out of a crowd to be paid. Upon hearing that we would be interested in a guide the next day, he pulled a sim card out of his pocket and gave it to us. From then on we had a direct Stanislav line. This came in handy the next day when he met us on a street corner, as he was on the way to a "meeting". The guy was awesome.

Anyway we saw so much in Russia, and had such a good time, I thought the best way to sum it us was a bunch of the best photos.

Taking it to the streets- they were packed.

What better way to see the city than on a boat tour (in Russian), with beer.

Dad was liking it too.

Amazing borscht at our favourite restaurant. They even had a guy with a keyboard singing synth classics in the corner.

A market we stumbled across in the middle of town.

In town with Valentine.

The palace of the spilled blood. If i remember correctly it was built on the site of where one of the royal family killed their brother or father or something like that. The Russian royal family was so into killing each other I kept on getting confused.

Some fairly impressive doors on one of the churches. Most of them are still standing as when the Germans blockaded the city for three years, they used them as aiming reference points.

At the Hermitage museum (the old winter palace), with our guide Oxana.

Peter got a book in Russian from a second hand book store we found down an alley.

The summer palace, with all its fountains that are run off water pressure from the mountains.

The summer palace had some impressive gardens.