Tallinn

Tallinn happened to be about just as cold as Helsinki, which is really no surprise; the city sits roughly 50 miles across the sea from its Scandinavian cousin. But for whatever reason, it felt delightfully tropical. Okay, well that's a lie, but I think the cobbled narrower streets of the city centre did a better job at preserving the little warmth that lingered in the February air.

And first glimpses did not disappoint. From snowy rooftops to onion-domed churches, we were a little bit more than enchanted.





And everyone knows that the first thing you do upon arrival in an Estonian city is to eat...greek food. It's all we could find, honest. We sat by the fire place, we ate and then Derryn sauntered back to our boutique hotel (discount!) and Rosa and I proceeded to comb the city for old books and USSR memorabilia.

We ended up finding one garlic(!) restaurant, one snood(!), an irish pub and the Estonian answer to the German beer hall. We may have also been the butt of a group of Russian schoolchildren's jokes, but when your body parts are mostly frozen, humiliation doesn't feel like anything.

where has this place been all my life?

a little bit like paris?
in the cobbled nooks and crannies off a side road

I think this photo aptly captures the nature of the cobbles and the ice. Apparently, residents of this part of the world spend four months sliding around on ice covered pavements. It was a health and safety inspector's worst nightmare.
Estonians are big on their tea houses and cafes. This one was chocolate themed. If you ever wondered if chocolate could be a successful theme, let me set the record straight. Yes.

in the central square
with frostbite to the brain
still four inches of flesh uncovered in the extreme cold

Before heading on the long (12 minutes in sub-zero temperatures) walk home, we fortified ourselves with larger than big beers. This happened to be the last time we saw Derryn out of bed for the rest of the trip. Which begs the question, what strange power does estonian beer really hold?

So we didn't spend much time in Estonia due to the Helsinki debacle outlined in the last two blog entries. But we managed to rectify a too short stay in Tallinn the next morning by getting very lost on the tram system and doing a delightful loop of outer, outer outer and outer outer outer Tallinn. It wasn't quite the trip to Estonia I'd imagined, but I'm hoping it's not going anywhere any time soon and i can go back.

Just not in February.