Around the World in 8000 days: Tallinn, Estonia

Welcome to our travel blog. We are Tabitha and Nic. In 2011 we 'retired' in our early 40s and set off to travel the world. We spent our first year in South America and have been lucky enough to make two trips to Antarctica.

Our blog is a record of our travels, thoughts and experiences. It is not a guide book, but we do include some tips and information, so we hope that you may find it useful if you are planning to visit somewhere we have been. Or you may just find it interesting as a bit of armchair travel.

Thursday, March 2, 2017

Tallinn, Estonia

Tallinn

OK, Nic has gone back to normal duties and I am back writing the posts - although you will get Nic again a little later when we post about Italy.

For now, after a month or so back in the UK, we were ready to head off again, and we had arranged to spend July in the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Our first stop was Tallinn, the capital of Estonia.

Tallinn is one of those cities that has a distinct 'old town', which contains most of the historical sites - and most of the tourists - but none of the day to day life of the city. That makes for a nice compact place to look around, but it does feel a little false, sort of like a large open air museum.

Generally, when places are like this, we try to get out to the modern parts of town too, but here we were lazy, and didn't bother.

Toompea Hill, Tallinn

Tallinn is nice. It looks pretty, it has nice little roads, good architecture, and a relaxed and pleasant feel about it. There maybe isn't any one thing that makes you say "wow", but the overall experience is good.

It is the kind of place where you can happily stroll through the little streets, maybe getting a little lost at times, and enjoy coming across a nice church, and interesting building, or a great little shop or eatery.

Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, Toompea Hill, Tallinn

We were staying in the old town, in a nice little hostel called Tabinoya. It was a little hard on the knees - up a few steep and winding flights of stairs - and it transpired that there was a noisy bar next door, which might be an issue if you're a light sleeper, but it was really convenient.

We took a wander up Toompea Hill to the old castle, now the home of Parliament, which wasn't very exciting itself, but had two interesting cathedrals nearby.

The first, right opposite the pink parliament building, was the very impressive Russian Orthodox Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, which was built by the Russians in 1900 as a sign of their dominance in Estonia. It was no accident that the cathedral was placed where a statue of Martin Luther had once stood, so that it was a clear message to the Lutheran people of Tallinn that Russia was in control.

Dome Church, Toompea Hill, Tallinn

The other was the rather less elaborate Lutheran Cathedral of St Mary the Virgin, or as it is commonly known, Dome Church. The main building was built in the fourteenth century, with the baroque tower added later in 1770.

Inside, the decoration is dominated by the coats of arms of important Germans from the 17th -20th centuries. The wooden pulpit and alter, carved by Christian Ackermann, date from the late 1600s, after the inside furnishings were destroyed by the 1684 fire that also destroyed most of the buildings on the hill.

Though there are many notable people buried here, one rather less distinguished resident is Otto Johann Thuve, who was apparently the local Don Juan, and requested to be buried right in the doorway when he died in 1696, as he believed that all the virtuous people walking across him would eventually cleanse his soul. Slightly dubious myself, but there you go.

Town Hall Square, Tallinn

Back down the hill, we took a stroll around the much photographed town square, with the Town Hall and Church of the Holy Spirit. The square is nice, but as you would expect, very touristy, and we preferred pottering about in some of the quieter streets.

One of the surrounding roads, Vene, has a couple of interesting passages to take a look at.

St Catherine's Passage is a nice little street to wander down, but the better one is the Masters' Courtyard, which has some nice little shops and an excellent café called Pierre Chocolaterie. We enjoyed some unusual hot chocolates - Nic's was gorgonzola and grappa - and shared a huge piece of cake.

Hell Hunt pub, Tallinn

Talking of food and drink, we found a couple of good places. We rather liked Hell Hunt, which was only opened in 1993, but is still the first modern Estonian pub, and has a nice selection of beers.

We weren't impressed with the Kwak café (either here or in Riga actually), and we had a meal in the main square which was predictably pricey and mixed; we had a great starter of duck confit with Jerusalem artichoke foam, but the mains let them down a bit.

A very decent cafe was Must Puudel, a seventies style, cosy place, with vinyl records playing and a good quality range of food and drinks - including vegan stuff if you so desire.

Then there was the oldest cafe in Tallinn, established in 1964. It is called Maiasmokk, which means sweet tooth, and it has an interesting marzipan room that you can pop your head in, as well as serving great drinks and cakes; we had to succumb to sharing three of them, as we just couldn't limit ourselves to one choice each!

But of course the place we really had to go into was the DM Bar, which is an ode to the band Depeche Mode. It was opened by a fan in 1999, but hit the big time on 27 August 2001, when band members Martin Gore and Andy Fletcher popped in with their drummer Christian Eigner. Some of the band also popped in again in March 2006, the evening before their gig.

It is a fun place to pop along to if you like the music, and they do some great cocktails, all named after songs of course. However it was very quiet when we went.

Freedom Square, Tallinn

Back on the sightseeing, we walked through Freedom Square on our way to the Museum of Occupations, which covers the various periods that Estonia has been occupied by different nations. It is quite thought provoking, if a little haphazard. You do need quite a few hours to get the best of it though, as the most interesting element was the collection of videos to watch, but they were numerous and lengthy, and of course only a few people can watch at once.

Tallinn

On the way back, we came across a parade, with people all dressed up in medieval garb. We suspect it was connected to the Hanseatic Festival that was going on in other places.

One place that we did rather enjoy just strolling around, and getting away from most of the crowds, was the park, just outside the main stretch of the old city walls. Not only do you get pretty - and considerately laid out - gardens, you also get a lovely view of the city walls, and an art show. There are some interesting art works. The extra large seat seems to be a bit of a compulsory feature these days, but the legs of a couple sticking out from under a bush was somewhat less usual!

Overall, we quite liked Tallinn, but it wasn't to be our favourite of the three capital cities.