After spending a night in the Swedish wilderness without a shower, or a proper toilet (think long drop toilet with a polystyrene toilet seat cover), we couldn’t have appreciated our small cabin with en-suite bathroom on the ferry from Stockholm to Tallinn any more than we did. We even checked in early, so that there would be time for a shower before dinner. You know that feeling when you’ve spent a few days getting dirty whether it be on a school camp, or a music festival where you can’t face showering next to thousands of other girls and you finally have a bathroom and hot water to yourself? You almost want to scream and cry happy tears at the same time! That was us.
We’re still not entirely sure if the ferry crossing was such a pleasant experience purely because of the this reason, or the amazing food that we managed to chomp down at the buffet restaurant for dinner, but either way, we would do it again.
Tallinn is one of those places that is pretty deceiving to the eye when you first arrive. Especially coming into the New Town and Harbour area. It just looks like any other city and not what we’d been expecting after seeing so many photos online of medieval buildings. As it turns out, those were all in the Old Town which makes sense considering its name.
Lucky for us, I’d found this awesome apartment on Airbnb under the name “Gnome House” and it just happened to be right in the middle of Old Town. The accommodation actually ended up being more than we bargained for, since it was a tourist attraction itself and often times when drinking our tea in the morning, we would look out and find a tourist taking a photo of the front of it.
Tallinn was the first and only city on our trip where we actually booked a Hop on Hop off bus and it was purely to get us from the Harbour to our accommodation and also to do a bit of sightseeing on the side, but mainly it was our mode of transport on the first day and it actually worked pretty well. The bus ended up dropping us off at Toompea Castle (with all of our luggage in tow) and we had to walk up the cobblestone streets and into Old Town where we could check into our accommodation early.
I think that these cobblestone streets combined with a pathway we ended up on around the castle that had little pebbles which stuck in the side of our suitcase wheels was actually the beginning of the end for one of our suitcases. We lost half of the one wheel this day and we only had four to begin with. Had we known then how bad the suitcase would get and how we would end up lifting it up to carry it through many a city with sweat dripping off our faces, I think we would have probably just gotten rid of it then and bought a backpack.
So, our first day was a bit of a bust with us spending most of our time either trying to get to our accommodation, or just chilling on the hop on hop off bus and trying to get our bearings in Tallinn. We did however find the Maritime Museum with Seaplane Harbour and were caught up in all of the boats, submarines, seaplanes and automatic guns from all eras for hours. We were both very excited to get to walk down into the submarine and see how people actually lived inside of it. In fact we got so enthralled that we actually almost missed the last hop on hop off bus that would take us home.
Day 2 in Tallinn was the highlight for me with us just sticking to Old Town and all of the medieval buildings that it had to offered. We visited Toompea Castle, Neitsitorn (Maiden’s Tower) which was so interesting and beautiful with all of these purple flowers growing outside and a stunning view out over the whole of Tallinn. We also decided to add on the tunnel tour which ran from under Kiek in de Kok and this was just incredible on such a large scale. The tunnels were used during World War II as air raid shelters, but now they have an entire exhibition dedicated to the history of Tallinn and World War II in general. For a while, we were the only two people in the tunnels and it felt like the end of the world or a zombie movie. Then a school group came in and ruined it all 🙂
The truly incredible thing about Tallinn Old Town has to be how there is a tower or part of the medieval wall that used to surround the city pretty much at the end of every street. I’ve never seen anything like it. I felt at times that I would see a woman dressed in her flowing medieval gown walking past with a basket full of flowers or something, instead of a tourist with a big Nikon camera and telephoto lens.
Trying to find the local food had been one of our struggles from the beginning of the trip and I can’t say that we had very much luck in Tallinn either. However, we did find blood sausages and they were so dark in colour that I just had to try them. We called them our traditional food for Tallinn and actually thoroughly enjoyed them. What we didn’t have trouble finding was the local beers and ciders. Names and labels I’ve never seen or heard of in South Africa jumped out at me and just called for me to buy them. I’ve always been more of a wine drinker, but when the wine got expensive, the cider was a fantastic alternative.
If I could give anyone advice on travelling to Tallinn, it would be this: don’t take a wheeled suitcase. That and you can walk to most of the sights, so save yourself the money you would spend on a taxi or bus and just walk it. You get to see so much more that way. Do yourself a favour and buy the combined ticket for Maiden’s Tower and Kiek in de Kok tunnels. It’s definitely worth it. Oh yes, and visit the Maritime Museum with Seaplane Harbour. I had no idea it even existed, so it was a proper unexpected gem that we found along the way.
