World Estonia Tallinn

Iain & Christine's Retirement Travels Scotland, Baltic & Norway

Tallinn, Estonia Jun 23, 2009

We woke to the sea as calm as a millpond and the sky bright blue, both of which continued all day. After breakfast we set off for Tallinn and walked into the old town. We passed Fat Margaret's Tower and up Pikk Street, admiring the old buildings, including the Ministry of police which is in the building once occupied by the KGB.

We turned into the Town Hall Square and on to the Tourist Information Office where we rented audio walking tour guides which proved most beneficial, though Christine complained that manipulating the audio guide, the accompanying map, her camera and her glasses was difficult. We followed the tour and found it most helpful and informative. The beautiful weather contributed to wonderful photos and made difficult the task of selecting a few for the web site. We walked up to the upper town - Toompea - and saw the Cathedral and several towers, including the intriguingly named "Kiek in de Kok Tower", so named because from it, one could see (kiek) into many kitchens (kok). Kiek is pronounced "keek", and "keek" in Scotland means to glance or peer at something. We walked round most of the town and elected to return to the Square by a slightly different route as the one in the tour we had taken on our way from the ship earlier. We completed the tour and Christine and David went to find a seat at one of several sidewalk cafes. Dawn went to a book store and I returned the audio guides. I met Dawn at the bookstore and we returned to the square to find Christine and David enjoying cafe lattes and waiting on cake to be delivered. We ordered and enjoyed the food, the people passing, and the sunshine.

We decided to walk back to the ship and took a slightly different route which enabled us to see different parts of the town and make a few purchases on the way. We spent a short time exploring the stalls set up close to the ship and David and Dawn made some purchases before we re-boarded the ship.

We found Tallinn to be a very pleasant town with a lot of history and well preserved buildings. The audio guide gave a commentary about the places of interest and had further information about the architecture and retold some legends about the places. Some of the buildings have a lot of history and most interesting incidents were related.

David's comment was that Tallinn must be one of the secrets of northern Europe. It is certainly worth a visit and more than the few hours we had to spend there. The ship docked at 7:00am and left at 2:00pm which was too short a time to give Tallinn justice.

We settled into our cabin and ordered lunch from room service so we could watch the ship leave. David and Dawn went and got their lunch, but brought it back to the room to eat. We sat on our balcony and watched Tallinn slowly disappear while first enjoying our lunch, then organizing the many photos we have taken in the past few days.

We were having an early dinner tonight. We went to one of the lounged to meet the people we had done the tour with in St. Petersburg and had a drink and talked about our experiences today and our satisfaction with the guide and tour we had enjoyed in St. Petersburg. Unfortunately two of our number could not join us for dinner, but the remaining six went up to the Island Cafe where they serve dinner at any time and enjoyed good food and even better conversation. Afterwards we had our usual walk round the ship before returning to the room and retiring for the night.

Tomorrow is a sea day and hopefully we will get the web site up to date. Hopefully, too, today's sunny weather will follow us on to Copenhagen on Wednesday.