Tallinn
Thursday, September 18th, 2008
Old town number: 10
Yes by now old towns are beginning to merge into one, not that I don’t think they are beautiful but it has been around 10 ‘old towns’ on this trip alone, not to mentioned last time in Europe. So Tallinn…it had a nice old town! The defining difference between Tallinn and everywhere else was that it was freezing cold here, like winter cold. I have spent a long time pondering the big question of what is worse, extreme hot weather or extreme cold? I have been in extreme hot and complained the whole time, now it is actually only marginally cold and I am complaining again. A bit depressing as for us we will only be going to colder places, Siberia is not that warm this time of year. Hopefully I will make it to Thailand before home to at least get some sun. But yes all those times I complained on the 40 degree heat in the middle east have come back to haunt me now as I wear everything warm available to me…which is not that much! I am sure I will get used to it and have decided that still warmer is better, although I probably wouldn’t be saying that if I was still in Egypt. I do really need to buy myself a hat though.
Anyway the cold is not the most important thing, Tallinn, the capital of Estonia is a lovely place. We somehow ended up at a terribly boring and quiet hostel with very little going on. No noise, no common room…more like a hotel with dorm rooms. We had arrived off of our bus around 12.30, only narrowly making the bus in the first place as the ticket office told us to buy a ticket on the bus where the bus driver told us to go back to the ticket office. Eventually after going back and forth in the rain we pushed ourselves onto the bus and managed to convince the driver to sell us a ticket. Our hostel was in a great location right in the old town so we dumped our bags, put on more warm clothes and headed out for some traditional Estonian food- mega huge stuffed pancakes which left all of us feeling a bit overfull afterwards….healthy eating in eastern Europe is tough.
We had a wander around the old streets and saw some churches and gardens. All very nice, I thought a bit nicer than Riga’s old town.
Tallinn also has all the old city walls still around which encloses the old town and separates it from the malls and banks (and real life) outside. We headed down to the supermarket to pick up a few supplies and brought something other than pasta and sauce for dinner, turns out our pancakes kept us going for the whole night so we cooked up our asian noodles the next night. Back at the hostel we just hung out and caught up on our blogs and well, hid from the cold. Again plans to go out kind of feel through as it was just so cold! And Tom went to bed early still a bit behind on sleep. Me and Rdoc did head out to this great café on the main square which is kind of underground with candles and comfy couches, they had the most amazing hot chocolates of all time (well the one in Warsaw was good as well so maybe 1st equal) it was like dark melted chocolate that you ate with a spoon, so we sat around in the warmth getting through our chocolate, another healthy addition to my food that day! Stuffed pancakes with creamy sauce and melted chocolate.
We just had one full day in Tallinn, which was probably enough to be honest after a lot of old towns. Another freezing day which does not make me excited about doing anything. But we got organized and went to the docks to get our ferry tickets for the next day to Helsinki. Helsinki in only 1.5 hours by boat then close to St Petersburg so why not head up there for the weekend? I love Europe how everything is just so close and you can just pop over to another country for the weekend. After we had our tickets we walked to a different part of the city with some sort of palace gardens then along to the beach which is probably nice during the summer but now is just a cold windy beach.
Back towards town we took refuge in a mall with the greatest supermarket of all time, basically it was just lots of food prepackaged into small servings, so you could get a really good lunch for cheap. Good salads, pizza by the slice, hot food, soups, pastries, juice, and usual supermarket food. It was overwhelmingly good, so we grabbed some stuff and sat in the mall then checked out a few shops before heading back to the hostel where I had a nap and was woken later by the boys who had discovered there was actually no accommodation for the next night in Helsinki. We spent a good few hours ringing places and emailing people we knew with connections in Finland. We had left it a bit late for weekend accommodation but who would have thought that it would be so full in Autumn. 2 days later lots of people had emailed us with offers of places to stay but a bit late by then, we managed to find a campsite cabin to stay in for the same price as a hostel so wasn’t too bad.
We made yummy, healthy asian food for tea then went back to the hot chocolate café and played some cards for awhile. We were trying to meet Joe, the aussie guy I had been hanging out with in Vilnius and Riga but didn’t work out so we tried to head to a few bars but I was over it, and freezing cold which means I can’t function or think any longer! So I headed back to the hostel for early bed while the boys had a few drinks somewhere.
Our ferry wasn’t leaving till 10.30 the next morning so it wasn’t a too early start, we went via the greatest ever supermarket to get some breakfast then headed over to catch the ferry towards Finland. The ride was pretty uneventful, nice boat, fast and we were stepping out in the even colder Helsinki by lunch time.
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