The Hippie Homo Baltic Honeymoon (+Malta)

Hey friends – there’s about to be a couple of weeks of radio silence here, as I do not plan on doing any heavy blogging while I’m on my honeymoon (maybe some quick pictures here and there).  So I thought I’d write up some of the details of our trip.  I’ve got a list of potential posts a mile long that I’m planning from the trip, but if you have any insider tips on the destinations listed below, I would love to hear from you – either in the comments or via email at nick@concreteandkitsch.com!

I’m excited as this will be my first big trip I’ve taken with intent to blog.  I’ve got all my kit ready like a kid on his first day of school, and I’m really excited to share the details (good, bad, weird, funny, and clumsy alike) with you when I return!

Part I: Baltic Road Trip

We decided on the Baltics after, unfortunately, cancelling our initial plans to go to Tunisia for the first part of our trip.  I’m super excited to see Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, though, and have planned a bit of a breakneck speed tour of all three countries from August 27-September 5.

Click on points on the map to see more info!
We’ll be kicking off our Baltic honeymoon in Tallinn, and heading south, through Latvia and Lithuania.  True to the two main themes of this blog, concrete and kitsch, we’ll be heavy on visiting Soviet-era relics of the three former Soviet nations – visiting at least one prison in each country, as well as abandoned sites in varying stages of decay.  David, as a former Navy submariner, is particularly excited about the Hara Submarine Base in Lahemaa National Park, Estonia.

Dark tourism aside, I’m excited to visit a few abandoned manor houses in Estonia (Kolga, Riisipere, and Ungru), castles in the Gauja National Park in Estonia (Cēsis and Turaida are in the plans currently), and the Hill of Crosses and Trakai Island Castle in Estonia.

We’ll be spending two nights in each in Tallinn, Riga, and Vilnius, and a night camping on Saaremaa, and on in Klaipėda to break up our drives between each capital.  Big thanks to Heather at Ferreting out the Fun and Elizabeth at In Search Of for their thoughtful advice of things to see in their respective cities of Riga and Vilnius.  Both were great in helping me with recommendations relevant to my non-drinking and David’s vegetarianism.

We’re also particularly excited to be driving ourselves on this trip.  When David and I first started dating, we took many shorter trips in and around the Pacific Northwest when we would race (marathons, mostly), so road trips are nostalgic for us.  Driving abroad is something I’m pretty comfortable with, as I drove quite a bit when I lived in Korea, and I don’t anticipate drivers to be that terrible.  This post, however, gives me a little caution.

Truth be told, even though I’ve planned like a maniac for this part of the trip, I don’t anticipate us seeing everything we have in queue.  It’s more like a guide of things that I feel would be interesting – and if we make it to all of them, great (but not likely), but hakuna matata if we don’t.  It’s more a way for me to whittle down a list of a million different places to identify the attractions that should be on our radar when we’re in each of these individual places.

From the Baltics, we will then move to…

Part II: Maltese Bun-Sunning

Malta is the single destination of our honeymoon that has remained constant since I began planning in January of this year. It was a much easier-to-get-to destination when we were coming from Tunisia, but I managed to find a cheap(ish), quick(ish) flight from Vilnius to Malta via Frankfurt, so we’re happy.  We chose Malta for hot weather and beaches, and I’m sure it will fit the bill.

We’re actually staying on the smaller, much more sparsely populated island of Gozo for our time in Malta.  We’re not huge fans of crowds, and Gozo looks to have a great trail system for us to run on during our time there.  Gozo is less touristed, and therefore has cheaper accommodation; I found us a converted farmhouse with a private pool to use as our home base as we’re there that we couldn’t be more excited about.

While on Gozo, we don’t really plan on doing much of anything.  We plan on exploring the island mostly on foot – we’re bringing our running backpacks, and plan on commuting to different beaches on foot as a way to train for our upcoming 50k in December – and just being as lazy as possible.  There will be a couple of summer festivals happening on the island while we’re there that we’ll likely hit up, but other than that, our plan is to read, relax, and work on our tans.

So that’s that.  I won’t be posting here until I’m back in the third week of Septmeber, but I’ll definitely be posting regularly to my Instagram and Twitter, so follow me there if you miss me!

xoxoxo