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Estonia: The glorious medieval city of Tallinn

Thursday, October 1st, 2009

The old city of Riga was certainly nice enough, but had it not marked our first steps in Europe for over a year, we probably wouldn’t have been greatly impressed – there were no city walls or gates, and only one tower, and it was the type of old city that you can spend two hours in and be done with. But as it was, we were thankful to be back among churches and cobblestones after a year travelling in Asia, and we headed north from Riga expecting a similar experience in the Estonian capital Tallinn. And even as we approached the old city of Tallinn on foot from the north, past the Swedish-built pentagonal bastion, we had yet no idea what awaited us inside: surely one of the most picturesque medieval cities anywhere in Europe, one with a timeless atmosphere more like that of Carcasonne or Siena than of a European Union capital.

Every street in old Tallinn is an adventure, and the city is made for unplanned exploration. As you walk on the cobblestones for the first time, around every corner there could be a new find: a stone tower topped by an orange tiled roof, or a tunnel passageway through to an open plaza, or a church spire climbing high into the sky. This was the Tallinn experience for us – four days of discovery upon discovery in one of the most enjoyable walking cities I can ever remember visiting. We climbed up towers, walked through tunnels under the bastions, explored 13th century Dominican monasteries, looked out over the old city from numerous viewpoints and ate at medieval restaurants. We liked it so much that we abandoned our planned visit to Kuressaare and spent all our time in Estonia in the capital instead, and it was worth every minute. The city is extremely well preserved and (with the sole exception of the token and tacky ‘torture museum’), the ‘Ye Olde Medieval Tallinn’ aspect has been authentically and tastefully done, most notably at the Olde Hansa restaurant and shop (or is that shoppe?).

From Estonia, the northern-most of the three Baltic states, we travelled by bus for nine hours yesterday back through Latvia to Lithuania, the southern-most of the three. About an hour outside the capital Vilnius, we saw the most amazing rainbow I’ve ever seen out the window to the east – the entire arc of it was lit up by the late afternoon sun. With such a spectacular sight as an introduction, we arrived in Vilnius at dusk and woke up this morning prepared to explore our last city in the region before heading back to a more familiar European capital – Rome.

Meanwhile I’m having some trouble embedding photos into this post for reasons unknown, but there are plenty of shots of beautiful Tallinn here.