Our grand trip around Northern Europe in the winter of 2024/2025 was a mammoth undertaking. We visited 10 countries, walked almost 550Km each, and took 16 flights.
We first transited Singapore, where the plan had more than half the toilets out of order, and we arrived in London early in the morning. We spent all day exploring London and saw Big Ben and the Tate Modern Gallery, visited the Churchill War Rooms, and walked all day! The next day, we explored Oxford Street and Regent Street, walked through Soho and Carnaby Street, and visited the British Museum, and then another Museum at the Sherlock Holmes Museum. We spent a day at the markets in Camden, before driving to Windsor Castle.
Then, half a day of driving down to Devon, we visited Sidmouth, Otterton, and Exmouth. The capital town of Devon is Exeter, and then we drove through Dartmoor to Plymouth. We had made few plans, as we wanted to keep flexible. Having a car in England gave us some flexibility in timing.
Our third flight was from Bristol to Edinburgh, where we enjoyed hiking up Arthur’s Seat and exploring Edinburgh Castle. We thoroughly enjoyed Edinburgh and would definitely go back if we get the chance. The weather was getting colder, but we had not seen snow yet.
Our disaster leg of the holiday started with the storm that made our 4am departure from Edinburgh a bit of a disaster. Our flight via Amsterdam was redirected to London Heathrow, where we missed our connection due to delays, and then they lost our luggage. The biggest problem with the lost luggage was that after Helsinki, our next stop was the Arctic Circle and we had no warm clothes. In Helsinki we went to a Viking restaurant, which we selected just because we were hungry – but found it was on our wish-list!
Leaving the snow of Helsinki, we got the overnight train to Rovaniemi, which was a great experience. It was actually fortunate that our luggage had been lost, as we would not have been able to get all our bags into the train sleeper cabin! When we arrived at Rovaniemi at 8am, our bags were already at the hotel, as the airline had flown them up (instead of blown them up).
Our first day in Rovaniemi was spent visiting the Santa Claus Village, and enjoying being in the Arctic. Unfortunately, Bianca fell over on some ice and broke her wrist, which stopped her from learning to Ski! But, strong as she is, she decided that she did not want to miss the Husky Dog Sled ride and the sauna and ice dip experience at Apukka before going to hospital. We tried to learn some Finnish, but everyone spoke English to us, so there were no communication issues.
We flew out of Rovaniemi to Glasgow, which many people had told us was boring, but we enjoyed our short stay. We then flew to Stockholm, where we had made no plans at all, and really enjoyed it. The Castle at Stockholm was the third Royal Palace that we visited, and we also enjoyed many other museums and galleries such as the Vasa Museum. Unfortunately, we were there on a Monday and many places were closed, including the Christmas Markets.
We took the high speed direct train from the centre of Stockholm, then a short flight from Stockholm back to Helsinki, so that we could catch the ferry from Helsinki to Tallinn in Estonia. We stopped to see a few art galleries, and explored the city a bit more. Both Sweden and Finland were fully English speaking, and we were able to use our phones to pay for everything, so I never used any Euros or even saw Swedish Krona. Tallinn was also very good at looking after English speakers – and all the signs were in English too.
Tallinn was a beautiful old city, where we enjoyed more museums and castles, found a hidden bar, and enjoyed the first of five medieval themed restaurants. Tallinn was a great experience, with beautiful Christmas Markets and a wonderful old town. We took a very short flight to Riga in Latvia, and had our final two Medieval dining experiences. We left the Baltics and headed to Germany with another short flight.
Christmas Day was spent in Berlin. We had a great steak for Christmas Eve, which was more fancy than we were expecting, and explored a lot of museums and galleries. Because Berlin is a large city, it did not have the charm and attraction of the smaller cities that we had recently visited. We then flew to Copenhagen.
Copenhagen is a smaller city and felt more enjoyable. We visited the magnificent Tivoli park, explored more castles, museums, and galleries, and then headed off to Amsterdam. Again, the Danish were helpful, always spoke English, took our phones as payment and we never saw their Krone our got out our wallets.
Amsterdam was a wonderful experience. We had flown through Amsterdam before, but the city was well worth the trip. We had a great steak at Midtown Grill, toured the Red Light District and went on a Canal tour, and visted the Body Works museum and other museums and galleries, before enjoying a crazy New Year experience.
We took the Eurostar from Amsterdam through Belgium to return to London. Our second visit to London allowed us to visit the Imperial War Museum and the HMS Belfast museum, Tower Bridge and to visit some more bars at Gordon’s Wine bar and the Gōng cocktail bar in the Shard. After visiting some friends and family, we were then back on the punishing 28 hour flight back home.
