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| Tallinn by Night - the magic of evening views - just like Egypt ruins! |
After enjoying Christmas in Stockholm, it was off to Tallinn, Estonia via overnight ferry for Vickie and I! (a side bar for a moment to go back to Stockholm – it seemed much less of a bike culture down south in Sweden – but maybe it’s b/c it’s winter and a bit more of an extreme/WHITE one than normal?). Anyhow, my friend, Christopher, had been through Tallinn before and said it was one of the most beautiful old cities of Europe and so with that glowing recommendation away we went (And we now agree!). We took an overnight ferry – The Baltic Queen – to Tallinn – a 15 hour ferry ride. It’s really more of a cruise boat than a ferry – and it had activities scheduled from the time of arrival until sun-up and then some (disco until 5 am anyone – had a bit of a party boat vibe to it for those into that)! It was a bit of a time warp – reminiscent of the 70’s moreso than the 2010’s! We were amused by the ‘supermarket’ – where the primary goods for sale were BOOZE and CANDY (bad idea to buy the Swedish berries – should have read the fine print – licorice flavoured :(! I saw one lady who literally had her whole grocery cart full of cigarettes – seemed like that was going to be a lot of cancer sticks to inhale! To save money (cost us 50 euro each for the ferry), we bunked in a cabin for four. For four LITTLE people that is – was very cramped quarters to say the least – especially with poor sick Vickie snoring, and so poor US too! listening to her snore all night long (I was trapped on a top bunk in the dark so couldn’t get down to get tissue for my ears or my mp3 player)! But we roomed with two lovely Russian gals from Moscow- Svetlana (which means light in Russian we learned) and Paulina. They are both architects and were on a Christmas holiday with some colleagues – having left their husbands at home. We had a lot of fun with them! And we were also delighted with the concept of an onboard spa – Vickie enjoyed some hand and foot treatments while I enjoyed a full body massage! Our tight quarters did have a bathroom with shower and also a tv so it was amusing to be able to turn on the tv to the channel that had a video camera out the front of the ferry – no need to be on the cold deck to check our progress :) I imagine the ferry is very beautiful to take during the longer days of summer when the views are no doubt stunning – we basically saw darkness on our trip!
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| The Baltic Queen - our ferry |
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| Paulina & I were both reading 3 men in a boat! |
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| Tight quarters to say the least! |
Upon arrival in Tallinn it was off to our hotel – Meriton Old Town Hotel – a lovely hotel on the edge of Old Town – which is a historic part of Tallinn – that is old – much older than Canada! As I kept saying to people in Estonia – the time frames they are talking about are difficult to conceive for those of us from Canada. The Old Town – where we spent most of our time in Tallin truly is magical – it feels straight out of olden times and fairy tales! Beautiful! I can totally understand why it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and it is the European Capital of Culture for 2011 (will be Umea in 2014)! And there is a lot of history here of course (and some not so happy) – from the Swedes to the Danes and the Russians, - there have been a variety of presence of other nations in this country, but they are now happily and hopefully permanently independent (although they are part of the EU but this is more of a positive democratic union!)– they even have an independence clock that counts up the months, days, hours, and seconds that they have been independent! A google search revealed more info on the history of Tallinn here.
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| Our lovely old hotel! |
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| The inside reception area of our hotel - love the exposed stone walls! |
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Our first day while Vickie was recuperating at the hotel I went out exploring. I was delighted to run into our new Russian friends just a block from our hotel and they invited me to join them for a day of exploring with their colleagues and students. Their colleague Gustav is originally from Tallinn and now lives in Moscow – he was very spirited and a delight to talk with too. I had a giggle when I asked whether Tallinn or Moscow was better – his safe reply was that Russia is better for work, and Tallinn is better for everything else :) I got lots of different architectural perspectives of Tallinn (I particularly love all the amazing doors they have and the churches are amazing to look at too – well it’s all amazingly beautiful!) during my day with the Moscowites and picked up a few Russian words (Dos vedanya my new Russian friends (good-bye) – has such a lovely ring to it! We had lunch at Olde Hansa – a medieval restaurant near the center square of Old Hanse – lit by candlelight and only serving food that they would have eaten back in the 14th Century. It was delicious (I had boar & elk). Everyone else (except fellow beer unappreciator Svetlana) was a huge fan of the warm honey beer! Vickie started to feel more human and by the evening she was ready for an outing to a sister hotel of ours outside Old Town that had the fancy amenities – pool and hot tub and sauna – sweat out that sickness! So we enjoyed that two days in a row :)
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| Svetlana and I by the Christmas market in Old Town Center |
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| The Swedish Embassy! |
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| So many cool doors! |
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| Russian church behind Paulina, Svetlana, and I |
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| Gustav - sitting on a bench he approved of architecturally - form and function! |
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| Independence monument on edge of Old Town |
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| They have left history everywhere - even in the parkades! |
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| A building built on 'trees' - cool! |
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| 14th Century Dinner with the Russian Contingent! |
Our second day in Tallinn I connected with Toomas – who runs City Bike in the Old City – on Uus street (apparently this means ‘new’ street in Tallinn – but new is relative – as it has been around still for hundreds of years – but it is a road I think he explained that used to be water when Old Town was surrounded by a moat. Toomas started his biking company back in 2003 – when he joked he only had mountain bikes despite it being called City Bike and had to remedy the situation– and it has grown a lot since then. He was so generous in offering to take me out on a personal tour of Tallinn, despite all of the snow (there was a LOT of snow – the theme of this winter for everyone I would say is SNOW – they were loading up dumpsters of SNOW in Old Town – gotta get rid of it somehow!!!!). So we went on a winter adventure (I told him having come from northern Sweden I was a-okay with riding in the snow) – 90% riding (even had spiked tires – which is more than I can say for my cruiser city bike in Umea) and only about 10% bike pushing through the deep snow! Sometimes Toomas would say – that is a path there and we would go another direction b/c while it might be a path when there is no snow, with the snow the path was not passable! A super friendly Estonian – thanks so much for taking me out in the SNOW Toomas! And if anyone is coming to Tallinn – you must go for a ride with City Bike :) We visited the Tallinn palaces (Tallinn is the capital and the Prime Minster lives in the palace), a war monument to WWII, and rode along the Baltic Coast. A fun adventure indeed! And was delighted to be able to experience a bike tour here to add to my past bike adventures in Paris, Berlin, and Bangkok.
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| Old and New Town off in the distance - obstructed by snow! |
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| We had to push our bikes in some places! |
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| Cruising along the Baltic - even hints of the sun! |
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| My bike's version of a snow angel! |
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| Back at base camp - City Bikes |
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| Toomas - the man behind City Bike! |
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| Kumu Art Museum |
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| Even the bikes need warmers ;) |
Vickie and Ispent the last day puttering around Tallinn and finishing up our shopping and enjoying the Kohvik (coffee) and chocolate shops, galleries, and the Christmas markets. I prefer the Swedish gingerbread, but the chocolate is just as good and the siroop waffle cookies were delightful! There are such lovely cafes and lots of handicrafts as well. In particular they love the hand-made wool hats and mittens here – including funny ones with super duper long pom pom tails that function as both a hat and a scarf – fun and utilitarian! It was hard to not buy lots! Tallinn goes to the Euro on January 1st, so while we were still spending Estonia krooni, I thought it was funny that the bank machines all said they would be ‘resting’ on December 30-31st, in preparation for the arrival of the Euro (and some scepticism that being on the euro is such a great idea). We did our fair share (or more?) of shopping and in the end this meant we had a situation with our baggage at the airport – it weighed too much for Air Baltic’s liking– so after some attempts at getting creative at the Tallinn airport, in the end I checked a bag and all was good (my additional bag was 20 Euro – vs 15 Euro for EVERY kilo that Vickie was over 20kg with her one bag). The strictness of weight restrictions is a bit obscene in Europe. I personally think they should factor in how much one weighs – little people perhaps they could give a little more lee-way in terms of how many kilos they can bring? Yeah I know –wishful thinking – but maybe an incentive for more time at IKSU ;)
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| Svetlana, Vickie, Me, and Paulina reunited under the Christmas Tree |
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| One of the many bastions surrounding Old Town |
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| The Christmas Markets continue into the New Year in Tallin |
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| Well I think my Mini might like it here too ;) |
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| They have to put the snow somewhere - take it away!!! |
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| Amusing kohvik 'coffee' shop sign - would you want to drink coffee from here though?! |
Nägemist (good-bye)
Tallinn – aitäh (thank-you!) for all! I think it would be great to come back someday – in the summer maybe- and go mountain biking outside the city – apparently there are lots of great trails to be enjoyed and the landscape is very heavily treed – so my kind of country! INDEED!
We stopped in Riga, Latvia for a couple of hours. So can’t really offer up much insight into Latvia except that it seems like it is expensive – but then again – most likely that is just the usual AIRPORT pricing!!! One thing I did learn compliments of the Air Baltic magazine (sitting on the tarmac with nothing better to do why not read ;) – is that apparently Riga is the site of the original decorated Christmas tree. So we have them to thank for the tradition of Christmas trees – tres cool (well it appears that a google search suggests that perhaps there are many places laying claim to the first Christmas tree!)! Oh and it turns out our travels also took us through Finland - our plane dropped some folks off in Vaasa - to be honest, I had to ask where Vaasa was - they spell it Vasa in Sweden - so that will be my excuse. But yeah - in the end we traveled to 4 countries in an evening - not every day you can say that eh!
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| Good thing Vickie is as in love with her laptop as I am with mine ;) |
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