Tallin, Estonia

Tallin, Estonia

December 1 and 2, 2009

Day 1

It was an early morning again, so that we could catch our 7 am bus ride over to Estonia. I made a friend waiting for the tram. It was a cat who made it appear as if he had been starved all his life and I would be the best person in the world if I gave him some food. He was super cute and fluffy and I couldn't resist (I know I shouldn't have, but you should have seen him begging). After a short tram ride, a bit of a wait and some tea, we were on the bus. Again, lots of leg room, very nice bus, this time with a "special seat" section for those willing to pay a little extra for even more leg room and for the ability to move your chair sideways as well as back! We cheaped out, who needs that stuff anyways? A 4.5 hour bus ride got us into Tallin, the most modern looking of the 3 countries. We walked to our hotel, which we found out was directly across from the ferry (made me very happy since we were to take the ferry 2 days later). Everyone was once again willing to speak English with no problems. Our room had a view of the Old Town (sort of. It was at quite a distance) which was cool. Now it was off to explore another Old Town. Third times the charm. We found a guide map to get us to all the important buildings. This Old Town seemed much more interested in telling tourists about its history. There were plaques on a lot of buildings with info on who had lived there during the medieval times. Very cool! We wandered around and got rained on as it started getting dark. We decided to have some groggi (hot wine) at the market and earlier I had seen a girl with a cup of melted chocolate, so I figured I might as well try it. Man, it was AWESOME! I love hot melted chocolate! The hot wine was interesting, though less appealing than the chocolate. After the warm drinks we went in search of some food and decided to eat at Hesburger, a burger place from Helsinki. They were pretty good at making their stuff taste McDonald's like. Then back to the hotel to do some reading, writing, watching TV and then bed time.

Day 2

We had some lovely breakfast at the hotel to start our morning. It was then off to find a bus to take us to Pirita beach. We found out that wasn't too difficult and found ourselves at the beach very quickly. The beach was separated from the road by a forest that looked like someone had planted rows of trees. It was a fun day walking on the beach, searching for shells, jumping over the little streams that formed. We even got to see the moon rise! It was beautiful. With not much else in mind, we headed back to the hotel and had a lovely supper. This was very much a quiet day.