a veg life

25 and 26 December 2015 Helsinki, Finland and St. Petersburg, Russia On Christmas Day, we slept in a bit (well, I did—Rick was up early) and had breakfast at the Hilton. The food spread was great, and we hung out a bit before my parents came down to meet us. We ate a bit more, then exchanged small gifts to celebrate the holiday. the breakfast spread at the Hilton the juice machine is operated by an iPad :)  love the design of the hotel--wood, copper, fur, navy canvas. lots of texture One of the things my dad really wanted to see was the Olympic Stadium from the 1952 Summer Games in Helsinki. Rick and I walked through the city’s equivalent of Central Park, and admired the scenery. isn't this just the perfect, stereotypical haunted house? The stadium will be undergoing renovations until 2019, and actually just closed on December 23 rd . Great timing right? We took a bunch of photos outside, then Rick managed to find an open gate, so we were able ...

(posted by Emily) Saturday 19 July Daily Step Count: 29,572 On Saturday morning, we woke up to another great breakfast from our hotel. Having the benefit of a free meal to start the day was totally worth it to us. We checked out of our room, but had the hotel hold our backpacks so we could pick them up later, closer to our departure. We decided to head back over to San Marco Square to see what the line for the basilica looked like. The streets were packed, with lots of tour groups from the cruise ships in town for the weekend.  The line to get in to the church was still pretty long, so we opted to get on the vaporetto and head over to Lido .     Lido is another one of Venice's islands, very long and narrow. It has swimmable beaches, so the locals tend to go there on the weekend to escape. The boat trip over was easy enough, though crowded.   When we got to Lido, I was feeling a bit nauseous from the boat ride. Strange, becau...