Our Baltic Cruise: Tallinn, Estonia

I assume that everyone survived the holiday weekend, that your hearing is slowly recovering from the thunderous din of massive fireworks displays (those not rained out, anyhow), and that you are ready to hear the latest installment of our vacation travelogue. Well, even if you aren't, it's coming ... today we visit the city of Tallinn, Estonia.

Continuing the unfortunate meteorological conditions we'd encountered in Oslo and Berlin, the day in Tallinn was heavily overcast, with rain fluctuating between drizzle and downpour. Nevertheless, we'd never been in Tallinn before and were determined to make the best of it.

The Old City of Tallinn has an upper and a lower part; we began on Toompea Hill, where the bus dropped us in front of the old fortress - now used in part as the meeting place of the Estonian legislature - and adjacent to the beautiful Alexander Nevsky Cathedral. Because of the size of the crowds, we did not try to visit the inside of the cathedral, although those of our group who did marveled at it's beauty ...

We continued walking down the narrow, scenic streets and eventually came to a stop at a scenic overlook which allowed beautiful views of the lower part of the city. By the merest chance, that scenic overlook just happened to be lined with souvenir shops and snack bars, although the most popular item that day appeared to be the free restrooms.

Here's an example of one of the streets of the old town. The figure in the red rain jacket is Agnes, taking advantage of one of the rare opportunities to take a photograph without a thousand tourists in it.

At the end of the walking tour we had about a half-hour to explore on our own, and so we spent a few Euros to visit the covered walkway along the top of the old city wall, which offered some beautiful views ...

and a small museum dedicated to the defense of the city throughout history ...

There are lots of great restaurants in Tallinn; we had lunch at a very picturesque place called "Peppersack," and were also intrigued by this establishment we passed on the tour. I'm sure the offerings were delicious, if not especially conducive to a date night ...

The city is ringed by the remaining portions of the old city wall, and by a series of tower fortifications which have been given nicknames by the local population. This one, the last we saw on the tour, is known as "Fat Margaret." According to our guide, no one is sure who "Margaret" actually was, so everyone has their favorite story ...

We enjoyed the visit to Tallinn, despite the miserable weather. Here are a few other notes from my travel journal to round out the story of our brief stop ...

- Estonians are fiercely proud of their independence, despite the presence of a large Russian minority population dating to the time when Estonia was shotgun-wedded to the Soviet Union. Although that's a generalization, I will note that our guide never passed up an opportunity to take a verbal swipe at Russia. At one point, she stopped our tour group in front of the Russian embassy to give us a brief lesson in the Estonian language ... she told us that the name of the country in Estonian is "Eesti," and encouraged us all to say it loudly several times, such that we were a group of about 30 people standing in front of the Russian embassy chanting "Eesti, Eesti, Eesti!!*"

- The country is proud of its status as a leader in high-technology. We were reminded many times that the popular electronic communication system "Skype" was invented in and is administered from Estonia. The country also has an "e-residency" program ... you can actually become a digital resident (although not a citizen) of Estonia, should you wish to do so. You can find out more about that here. 

- The beauty of much of the old city was marred by endless construction ... most streets are of cobblestones, and it seemed as if every ten meters or so the streets were dug up and the cobblestones piled everywhere amid seas of mud (thanks to the near-steady rain).

And that was our visit to the beautiful, if wet, city of Tallinn, Estonia. There was far more to see and experience than we could possibly have squeezed into a visit of only a few hours and so, as with everyplace else we visited on this cruise, we'd love to go back again and spend more time. Preferably in better weather.

The Regal Princess pulled away from the dock shortly before 5:00 PM and set course for the next port of call, St Petersburg, Russia ... which we will visit in this space tomorrow.

Have a good day. More thoughts (and pictures) coming.

Bilbo

* I was looking nervously around for security cameras ... after all, our next stop on the cruise would be in Russia.