We woke and had overnight both decided that we would sadly not book for the river cruise with Philip and Anna. It was just too soon after this trip and too hard to research on the ship to be comfortable with the price.

We headed ashore soon after docking with the aim of making our way to the Toompea Castle. It is about the highest point in the old city and it made sense to go up in the morning cool and wander down during the day. I had loaded local caches and we hoped to find some today as well.

The Castle is the home to the Estonian Parliament, but the area was closed off by scaffolding. There was an earthcache based on the limestone it was built with and we managed to get some answers by looking outside the walls near one of the towers.

We next visited the Cathedral of St Mary the Virgin, which was also at the higher area of the city. This was quite bare looking from the outside, and we heard later it is similar inside. We side-tracked to look at other old buildings in the area, most of which had new purposes.

Our next spot was near Raekoda, the town hall. It looked like a church at first. Old Thomas (in Estonian Vana Toomas) is one of the symbols and guardian of Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. A weather vane with the figure of an old warrior called Old Thomas was put on top of the spire of Tallinn Town Hall in 1530. According to the legend, the real life model for the weather vane was a peasant boy, who excelled at the springtime parrot shooting contests involving firing crossbow bolts at a painted wooden bird on top of a pole, organized by Tallinn's Baltic German elite at the time. Unable to receive a prize owing due to his low-born status, Toomas was rewarded with the job of town guard for life. He was subsequently immortalized in copper. Toomas continues to watch over Tallinn and its citizens. In 1944 Old Thomas was hit at the time of the March bombardment. The burnt spire was reconstructed and a new copy of Old Thomas erected in 1952. In 1996 the spire was renovated and the third Old Thomas figure was put to guard Tallinn. The original weather vane is kept inside the Town Hall and the one erected in 1952 is shown at the Tallinn City Museum.

In the square on the ground was there is a stone disk with compass bearings and the text "Raekoja platsil asus vana Tallinna nullpunkt". The text translates to "Zero point of old Tallinn was located on the Town Hall Square". This is the place that determines the house numbering directions in all streets of Tallinn. Town Hall Square is also the starting point of the oldest streets in Tallinn.

We were getting thirsty more than hungry and stopped at a restaurant for orange juice and light snacks. Then we headed for St. Katherine’s passage.  This passage was famous as the location of St. Katherine’s Guild to which many different craftsmen belonged. There was also a cache here near a series of tombstones that had been placed on a wall, having been moved from the churchyard.

We then backtracked to St. Nicholas’ Church. The former church today houses the Niguliste Museum, one of the branches of the Art Museum of Estonia. The exposition of ecclesiastical art from the Medieval and Early Modern periods presented here is the most significant and extensive collection of church art in Estonia. We were not interested in church art but did find the cache in the hands of cachers from Germany so another quick find.

We then spent a silly amount of time trying to find toilets before just going into a café and buying enough to use theirs. It was time to head back via St Olafs church. For about 60 years it was famous for being the tallest building in the world. There were a number of people walking up inside for the view but we just headed down for the ship.

Back on board we headed for the pool and enjoyed the water which was warm enough to be easy to get into and cool enough to soothe our feet. We could even sit in the sun and enjoy happy hour cocktails.

I also asked Customer Services if we could send a message to Alex and Warwick (from Nelson) through them. They rang their room, and I was able to leave a number for our room. When they rang back we were able to meet up and have a good chat over dinner. We did not linger as we all had early starts the next day. They had sorted a private tour which was similar to ours but much cheaper. We had done research ourselves but had made the decision to go with the boat tour, to have certainty when we were travelling.