the starrs: Tallinn, Estonia

I'm going to be real honest - I didn't know Estonia was a country until we signed up for our cruise, and therefore we didn't really know what to expect on our visit to Tallinn. Our guide book was (again) very helpful and informed us about Tallinn's history with Russia as well as providing us with another self-guided walking tour. The city itself was nice and compact, which was great because we got to see so much by just walking around.

We started off in front of the broken black arch, which is a memorial to over 800 people who died on a passenger ferry in 1994 while it was making the trip from Tallinn to Stockholm. Apparently there are conspiracy theorists who believe that Sweden sank it since the boat sank quickly, Sweden never allowed any divers to explore the site, and now there's talk of entombing the ship in concrete leading the conspiracy theorists to believe it was a nuclear-material related incident. I thought that was fascinating since it was a relatively recent event, but with all the technology available then (and today) it seems like it should be possible to excavate and research what actually happened. I guess we'll never know. ;)

Next we saw Fat Margaret Tower, which guarded the entry gate to the town in medieval times, and this leads to Pikk Street which was the merchant's main street during that time period as well. Now it is lined with cool buildings and St Olav's Church. We climbed to the top of the church spire (232 steps very windy and narrow steps!) and got some great views of the city, and the wall that surrounds the city even today. When Tallinn was under Soviet rule, the KGB used the church tower to block the television signals fro Finland - interesting! We kept going down Pikk Street and arrived at the Town Hall Square. It was filled with restaurants, lots of tourists, and supposedly one of the oldest pharmacy's in Europe (I took some pictures for you dad!) dating from 1422. Next we found the Wheel Well which in the 15th and 16th centuries was considered to be "high-tech" and helpful for obtaining water more efficiently.

Next we saw the Russian Cathedral, which was built in 1900. Apparently Estonians don't care for the church because they thought it was an attempt by Russia to flex their "cultural muscles", especially since it faces Tallinn's Parliament building. We walked around to the pink palace across the street from the cathedral, which is the Parliament building, and then on to a viewpoint to take in the city from higher up. Finally we headed back down towards the "Sweater Wall", which really did have tons of (mostly) handmade sweaters and other trinkets. We walked up on top of the city wall and went into two of the twenty-six watchtowers that still exist from medieval times, and then we headed back to the cruise ship!

We thought that Tallinn was an interesting city, especially with it's Russian ties and history, and it was very pretty. It seemed pretty tourist oriented, which makes sense with all of the cruise groups coming through there, but other than the huge crowds we ran into at some of the sites (there were lots of people on actual guided walking tours), it was a very enjoyable day. :)