Tallinn - Estonia

We have a map, we can travel

So when we were chatting to the guys who took us on our photo tour of Riga we told them that our next stop was Tallinn. They then gave us a map of the place, score! So whilst we got the Lux bus and it was a very luxurious bus indeed unfortunately my body didn't agree! I pretty much spent 3 hours on the bus with the front of my rib cage trying to push itself out of my back through my spine, needless to say.... I was in a little bit of pain and discomfort on the bus journey and the other Spaz got to see me pull some rather funny faces. Stupid body!!! But arrive in Tallinn we did, da da daaaaaa! (for the pop culture reference refer to the movie The Croods, watched whilst on the bus. The trailer can be found in the link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBdiFU6DgpE).

Again we walked for another 45 min with a pack that now weighs around 222kg (picked up some cheap vodka in Poland and Estonia) to the hotel. Yes, we upgraded to a hotel, da da daaaaaa!

Tallinn consists of an old town, some former soviet sites and a huge national park. We restricted ourselves to seeing old town and the museum of contemporary art areas. Old town is pretty but it is just full of tourists and the things that tourist need, restaurants, bars and somewhere to pick some craptastic souvenirs. Since I had already been to Tallinn I made the other Spaz be in charge at this point. I didn't want to stop him from seeing things just because I might have already seen them before. It appears that we have very similar interests as we did pretty much did a compressed version of the last time I was in Tallinn, Walked around old town, saw key historical sights, went to the museum of occupation and spent time out in the green park area around the art museum.

One place that I remembered from my last visit was a fabulous pancake place. I knew what it looked like but I didn't know its name. Thankfully my brain and body can lead me to food reliably, Kompressor pancakes are the bomb!!! blue cheese and mushrooms for me and ham and smoked cheese for the other Spaz, devine!

So so so gooooooood :-)

Apparently this was good too

One place that I felt more confident exploring this time was the soviet market. Having a boy next to you is a good thing when travelling sometimes. The soviet market is run by and for former soviets that live in Tallinn. Many are unemployed or on a very tiny soviet pension so they need somewhere to buy and sell goods cheap. It is full of 'brand' name socks and underwear as well as some rather dodgy looking Russian fashion. Since we had been on the road a couple of weeks by now we decided that some new socks and underwear might be a good idea. I put a hole in my 'addidas' sock by just putting it on my foot and the shape of the male underwear leaves us thinking that Russian men must have different shaped hips and boy bits from other men. At least it was all really cheap, 3 pairs of socks for 2€. 

The best part of the russian market was walking around all of the 2nd hand stalls. They had old soviet cameras, clocks, pins, flags, fuse boxes and the odd meter of electric cable. There was also a phone charger for every phone ever made, ever, available for sale. Whilst I joke about some of the things for sale there, there is also a bit of a sad side to the market. You get to appreciate just how rich and well off you are when you see little stalls or a table or a cloth on the ground being run by nana's selling glass bottles. These aren't anything special bottles, just washed and dried bottles that we all use and then throw into the recycling, just glass bottles from when we buy a pasta sauce or jam at the supermarket. There were also stalls where nana's were selling the odd lettuce leaf or cucumber they had grown. Very very humbling.

One afternoon we were rather lazy, after walking the 3km out to the park we then sat under the trees and read and chillaxed. A perfectly balanced holiday :-)

lazy afternoon view, green leaves and blue sky

Squirrels don't need a warning sign

The next port of call for us was Helsinki and we were actually going to arrive in the port :-) on the fast catamaran ferry, 90 mins and we were there.