Sunday, November 11th, 2007
Our second airBaltic flight was a Fokker 50 prop plane, but luckily it was a quick ride up to Tallinn (which they pronounce just like Arnold Schwarzenegger would …)
We caught the bus into town, not realizing that we missed the bus station. Next thing we knew, we were at the Port, and since we were not in Venice, there was no way to take a boat to our hotel … alas, we took at $20/2 km taxi to our Uniquehotel Mihkil. Our hotel was very nice and modern, and only about a 10 minute walk from old town. With our trusty ‘In your pocket: Tallinn’ guide, we made our way to find dinner. We settled on the first restaurant, Hookah House and enjoyed kebabs and Indian food, along with a peppermint flavored hookah (when in Rome!).
We continued our evening the only local music we could find on Sunday night….the “Beer House.” The restaurant was a traditional German Beer house, and we felt as if we were not at all in a former soviet state until the people next to us started talking to us in Russian. The were very friendly, and we realized that the gentleman was asking Katie for her hand to dance… then Katie somehow successfully communicated that she was “married”… and this gentleman continued to ask pretty much every other “single/younger” woman in the bar to dance. Alas, he went to the dance floor on his own, doing the pulp fiction twist dance. We enjoyed a fun evening of meeting the locals and hearing American music with Russian accents.
We were up bright and early on Monday to enjoy our tasty hotel brunch and take on Tallinn by storm. We ended up buying the “Tallinn Card,” which gave us free local transport, discounts at restaurants and shops and free entrance to entertainment and museums all over Tallinn. We also learned that Tallinn is applying to be the European Cultural Capital in 2011, so they are working hard to stimulate their tourism.
We started our tour of Tallinn with doing two of the three City Bus Tours (super tourist alert!) to see central Tallinn and the nearby Pirita and Kadriorg. One of the most interesting facts we learned was Estonians are incredibly Internet savvy. 97% of the bank transactions are done via the Internet, and they have already conducted their voting successfully via Internet ballots. We also learned that our beloved Skype was invented in Estonia, as well as the music program Kazaa.
After touring the sites, we attempted to use our free hour of bowling, only to learn that it was all booked. So, we packed in our last bit of history for the day at the Estonian History Museum. We got to meet many mannequins dressed in old medieval garb, see the first ‘money belt’ and many knights in shining armor. We ended our night by eating authentic Estonian cuisine at “Turg,” which did not go down in history for a memorable meal… although we did enjoy our complimentary glass of champagne thanks to the Tallinn Card.
On Tuesday, we started our day with a below zero bike tour…which was (big surprise) included in our Tallinn Card. We were ‘lucky’ that we were the only participants, so we got a private tour with Tomas. We pretty much saw most of the same sites as the city bus tour, but had the pleasure of exercising and getting the view point from a local. After our 2.5 hour bike ride, we had lunch and visited the tower/museum “Kiek in de Kok,” which translates to “Peek in the Kitchen.” One of the most interesting parts was seeing the wax covered black cloak that doctors used during the plague to visit patients. They had a big beak covering the faces that housed herbs and aromatherapies, as well as glass that covered their eyes to avoid being stuck with the plague. Over 80% of Tallinn died due to the plague, and most of the town, including the king became rather reclusive after this horrid event.
We ended our day of touring at the Occupation Museum, where we learned about Estonia’s many occupiers: Russia and Germany over the past hundred years. They had many videos of older Estonians interviewed giving their perspective on life during the wars and occupations. We decided to take it easy before dinner and head to use our 2.5 hours of free spa time. Dermot took full advantage of riding the three water slides and swimming in the 25 meter long pool. After dinner at Peppersteak, a medieval restaurant where we had meat stew, saw swordfights and our waitress wore 15th century garb, we ended the night using our free hour of bowling.
Our last full day in Tallinn was started by taking the third City Bus to the Open Air Museum, which came highly recommended by Tomas, our bike tour guide. We got a free audio guide with our Tallinn card and off we went! We saw many reconstructed homes from 15th century Estonian times, including the summer kitchens, which always included saunas. We also learned how towns were formed around schools, churches, and how the class system was established. During these times, if you owned land, then you were wealthy, and this was the main source of showing wealth. We also learned about the importance of blacksmiths; however, for some reason, women wouldn’t marry them due to their life of ‘servitude.’ We enjoyed local pancakes and hot mulled wine at the reconstructed tavern in town, then caught our city bus back into old town.
Our next museum stop was to the tower “Fat Margaret,” which was named for the thickness of the tower’s walls, and also to mock the Danish Queen (which no one obviously liked….) The tower was now home to the Estonian Maritime Museum, which had detailed information on any/all boats that ever entered the Baltic Sea. After feeling like our brains were pretty much full of all the Estonian knowledge we could take, we took in the beautiful view from the roof- and went next door to visit the Mine Museum. The mines were either found in the port of Tallinn or in the gulf of Finland (only about a 2 hour boat ride north.) We received a tour from a man who looked as though he was older then most of the mines, as he showed us the three types of mines: galvanic, acoustic, magnetic. We ended our day of museums with the health museum, which was mainly geared towards children (which was our mental state late in the day….after so much Estonian history) learning about their health and reproduction. We thought dearly of Carla, our friend about to give birth any day to a baby boy! To feel her pain, Dermot and I both tried on the ‘baby belly,’ which was much more awkward then our 30 lb backpacks. Somehow, we did not loose our appetites learning about the ‘stork’ and we headed for drinks and dinner on the town to celebrate getting over $100/each free with the Tallinn Card.
On last morning in Tallinn consisted of an Irish breakfast at an Irish pub in the town square. We also took a quick audio tour of Tallinn (another Tallinn card freebie!) We explored the only part of Old Town left undiscovered, Toompea. We saw Alexander Nevsky’s Cathedral, the Dome Church, Toompea castle and more about life in the old town during medieval times. The highlight of which was finding a “Rock and Roll” shirt that mentioned Deep Purple. I guess they have officially hit the big time Patrick, huh?
After the tour, we splurged for 8 euro hotel transport to the airport (yet another reason to LOVE the Uniquestay) and checked in with plenty of time and very unique…we walked past the airBaltic ticket agent into customs and the security line...no queue! We caught our flight without any problems, and we were off to our last Baltic state: Lithuania.