Happy, Happy Hour in Tallinn

Sunday, October 17, 2010
Tallinn, Harjumaa, Estonia
On Friday morning, we travelled from St. Petersburg to Tallinn, the capital of Estonia via Eurolines luxury bus - reclining spacious seats, free hot drinks machine, toilet, free Wifi too - like a hotel on wheels but without the prostitutes! The trip took about 6 hours including a painless border crossing - got off at the Russian border for a Russian exit stamp, then at the Estonian border, our passports were collected, processed and returned without having to get off the coach. The weather had taken a turn for the worse on the way, with snow blizzards, but fortunately cleared up by the time we reached Tallinn in the afternoon.

Estonia was ruled and conquered by many European powers over the previous hundreds of years. It gained Independence after WWI but came under Russian control after WWII. In 1989, approx 2 million people formed an enormous human chain across Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and called for Independence, which came soon after. Estonia is seen as the most modern and European of the ex-USSR republics due the influence of nearby Finland.

The heart of Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, is the Old Town, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This is split into Upper Town (built on Toompea Hill where, in 1219, the Danes built a castle and now features the parliament buildings) and Lower Town, which lies to the east and is surrounded by a defensive wall.

We were staying at the Hotel Tatari-53 and had a day and a half in Tallinn. All we basically did was sightseeing around the town, and this is what I think we'll be doing in the next two places (Riga in Latvia and Vilnius in Lithuania) so to me, it felt a bit "hands-off". All my sightseeing was in Old Town and I've put information relating to what I saw against the individual photos.

A minute from our hotel was "Tommi Grill" - great food, and during the Happy Hour from 5-8pm, lager is 35 EEK, irrespective of size (which can be 0.3l, 0.5l or 1l - about 1/2 pint, 1 pint or 2 pints), so I stuck to the 1 litre glasses! I can't see this catching on in the UK though. I had all my meals here, and made full use of the Happy Hour :-) A late night on Saturday night, got back to the hotel at 2am, had to be up at 7am the next morning to catch another luxury coach to Riga, Latvia.

Comments

dianne
2010-10-19

Nobody in Russia smiled. How sad. I smiled my face off and did not get one returned smile. I found lots of people stared in all the countries and no wonder with the way we looked, schlepping around with out bags, looking tired and in need of a shower. In fact, in one place an older man snapped our group waiting for a bus and shouted "Facebook!" Regards to Mauel our favourite tour leader of the 2. We left Budapest and went on to Croatia- fabulous. Look forward to more.

2025-02-16

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