Our first day in Stockholm was cold and windy and grey, but we tried to make the best of the newly freezing temperatures and still enjoy a good chunk of the city.

When we woke up in the morning, our boat was cruising through the outer parts of the Stockholm archipelago. The temperatures had dropped big time over night and the islands were covered in snow.

We docked and made our way to our hotel to drop our bags before setting out for a day in Gamla Stan, the historic part of the city. 

Gamla Stan is home to the Royal Palace and is known for its beautiful architecture. 

We spent most of our morning just wandering up and down the narrow streets before making our way back to the Palace to watch the changing of the guard in the early afternoon. 

We warmed up with a hearty lunch in Gamla Stan before heading over to our city hall tour. 

The city hall building itself was really interesting. The outside is kind of dark and a bit depressing looking, but inside each room has pretty different design aesthetics. 

Our tour started in the hall where the Nobel winners get to celebrate their accomplishments before moving on to the part of the building where Stockholm's politicians do their work. 

We passed through rooms with gorgeous artwork, including these lovely tapestries.

And then we ended up in this wild room full of gold mosaic. I have to say this room was not what I was expecting at all to see in city hall, but the mosaics were stunning. 

This room is used for lots of things, but it's also where the post-dinner dancing for the Nobel winners takes place. 

We finished out our first day in Stockholm on the hunt for some traditional Swedish food for dinner. I, of course, got the Swedish meatballs. They were good, but I found that I liked the food in Finland better.

Our last half day in Helsinki, we woke up to sleet and rain that we hoped would clear out by the time we finished breakfast since we only had a few hours remaining before we were heading to Stockholm.

Luckily it did, and we were able to enjoy our last few hours walking around to the last few sites we hoped to check off our list. Helsinki isn't a huge city, so we felt we got to see a lot even though we weren't there for super long.

It stayed cold and grey as we strolled past some of the major museums, around the library and up to Toolo Bay, which was still largely frozen. 

I had been interested in checking out two churches that came highly recommended in Helsinki. The first was the Kampii Chapel of Silence. It's supposed to be a place anyone can go for a moment of respite in the city, but unfortunately it was temporarily closed while we were in town. 

The other church I've seen referred to as the rock church in English because it's this big church that is built into a rock that was blasted out. 

The architecture in the church was pretty cool, and I certainly enjoyed the chance to get out of the cold weather for a bit. 

We wrapped up our remaining time in Helsinki riding some of the city's trams. Rick Steves had an interesting tram loop he recommended for a chance to catch a glimpse of some of the further out sites in the city, and since we had some time to kill before we needed to head to Stockholm, we did that. 

The tram tour took us past the old Olympic stadium, through some neighbors, past the botanic gardens and then back into the heart of the city before passing through Helsinki's version of embassy row.

After collecting our luggage at our hotel, we walked about 15 minutes over to the port where we could catch our boat to Stockholm. 

We had initially been planning to fly to Stockholm, but after our horrendous travel experience getting to Helsinki, we weren't eager to deal with an airport again so soon. So we switched things around and booked an overnight boat trip instead. 

We found good seats to watch as we departed Helsinki before the sun set. 

My pictures through the front windows are less than ideal, but it was too cold to stand outside on the upper decks. 

When we were planning our vacation, one of the coolest things we discovered is that it's really easy to take a day trip from Helsinki in Finland over to Tallinn in Estonia. There's a ferry that runs right across the Baltic sea. It takes about two hours, and it only costs $20 per person. 

This was a total no-brainer for us to add to our itinerary, and we're so glad we did. Tallinn ended up being one of our favorite parts of the whole trip. 

We spent our day in Old Town Tallinn, which is the walled part of the city with some of the medieval architecture dating back to the 13th century. 

In some ways it reminded me of the walled city of Quebec, but obviously much older. It was a little bit like being in a fairy tale walking around the cobblestone streets, seeing the old churches, and wandering around the Town Square. 

We started the day in the lower part of Old Town.

We popped into some old churches.

We explored Town Square.

There's an old pharmacy here that is still open and you can check out some of the ancient cures people used back in the day to treat a variety of ailments. 

One of the cooler things we did was climb the city walls and explore some of the museums that had been set up on the old watch towers. The museums covered the historical uses of the towers as well as some of the other medieval history.

There was some eerie stuff like this plague doctor and some of these statues, which I think I heard a tour guide say were faceless monks. 

After descending from the ramparts, we headed into the upper portion of Old Town, which is where the Parliament building sits as well as a massive Russian Orthodox church.

After a day spent exploring, we grabbed a late lunch at a medieval themed restaurant, where we feasted on a massive pork leg.

We just really loved taking in all the architecture in Tallinn, which is so different than anything we see at home. 

The last thing we did in Tallinn was spend some time in a museum dedicated to Estonia's more recent and darker history as part of the Soviet Union. Under Soviet rule, one of the old houses on a main street in Old Town Tallinn had been converted into KGB prison cells. 

Now the basement of the house is open and converted into a small museum where you can see the horrific conditions in which people were held under KGB rule often before being shipped to a gulag.

Our stop in this museum was definitely a heavier part of the trip and a sharp contrast to the enjoyment of taking in the sights at street level. 

We ended our day back on the ferry to Helsinki talking about how we expected nothing else on the trip would top our day in Tallinn.