For us, Tallinn is easy to reach by boat from Helsinki, the capital of Finland. And luckily, my Korean friend let us stay at her place for one night, so we saved some money! The boat trip took about two hours, and after arriving to the port and leaving our bags to the hotel we started to explore the Old Town. Well, due to the lack of time we spent most of our one and half days in the Old Town. I have to admit that to explore Tallinn further two days is not enough, since there are places surely worth visiting in other parts of the city as well. Hopefully I'll get to those places sometime later!
The feeling in the Old Town was peaceful, and I simply loved all the medieval buildings. It felt like a small island in the middle of a modern city. Many of the shops and restaurants were built in the basements, and pretty much everything was decorated in medieval style. We ate in the same restaurant on both days, but unfortunately I can't remember the restaurant's name. :( It was situated close to the House of the Brotherhood of Blackheads and - surprise - built in a basement. The meals there were quite small, but the wild boar on the second day still tasted great!
Street view and the Three Sisters hotel.
Coastal gate from inside the Old Town.
And one funny thing about the language was that even though neither of us knew any Estonian, we could still understand it somehow because it sounds so much like Finnish.
Random boutiques.
Also, Estonians seem to love pancakes, so of course we had to visit one pancake restaurant. It was called Kompressor. The pancakes with ice cream tasted great, though the servings were pretty big. In addition to pancakes, there were lots of cafés and small chocolate and marzipan shops around the old town, and we could have even made our own marzipan figures in one of the shops. That shop even had a small marzipan gallery downstairs!
The marzipan gallery: everything here was made of marzipan.
Since it was March, some of the places like churches and an old monastery were closed, and there were no medieval stalls on the town hall square like during summer. Despite the chilly weather and some snow there's still a lot to see even during winter time, so here are some of my favorites!
Fat Margaret and the coastal gate
The gate was built for defense and to control the access to the city. We didn't visit inside the Fat Margaret tower, but we heard it has been as well a storage room as a prison, and nowadays serves as a maritime museum. Because of the tower's size, the gate looked pretty impressive while climbing the stairs towards the Old Town walls. Funny thing is, the origin of the name of the tower is a mystery even to the people of Tallinn.
Olde Hansa
A restaurant built completely in medieval style: it looks old, there's no electricity but all the light comes from candles, the music is medieval, the staff are wearing old-fashioned clothes, and even the menu has all medieval recipes! You could even eat bear meat, though the price of 99 euro is probably too much for most of the visitors. We never ate here, but I completely fell in love with the restaurant's theme and appearance. Next to the restaurant there was also a medieval souvenir shop.
Town Hall square
This is the place where most of the medieval stalls stand during summer. The square is quite big and surrounded by beautiful old buildings and the town hall - and on top of the town hall spire, the Old Thomas weather vane, which has been the symbol of Tallinn for almost 500 years. On one corner of the square there's a pharmacy that has been running since 1422 and has a modern pharmacy as well as a side room presenting the old times. Worth visiting is also an antique shop right next to the pharmacy. If you come out of the pharmacy and start walking on the right, you should be able to see the L-shaped rocks on the ground, which is all that's left of a cross. The cross was set there because, if I remember correctly, a monk killed a waitress after receiving a wrong meal and afterwards wanted to be killed on the same spot to make up for his crime.
Town Hall.
The pharmacy.
Remains of the cross on the ground.
A small street that's said to be the most picturesque street in the Old Town and on which there are small craft workshops. The old St. Catherine's church is right next to the street, but just like many other places, it was also closed during winter, so we only saw the street and the old tombstones placed on one wall of it.
St. Catherine's Passageway
Masters' Courtyard
Although this site is quite small and somewhat hidden, it's somehow really beautiful and has a feeling of old times. Originally it was for the master craftsmen and contains shops for handmade products, exhibitions, and a small and absolutely cute chocolate shop called Chocolaterie Café. I believe it's even more beautiful without snow when there are tables set outside the cafés.
Kohtu viewing platform
I've always loved this kind of places where you can see the whole city or whatever below you. We went to this viewing platform once in the evening and again the next day, so we saw both the dark city dotted by lights as well as the colored one in daylight. The best thing was that from the platform we could see both the old town with all the church spires and red roofs as well as the block buildings of modern Tallinn. There was also another viewing platform called Patkuli, but the scenery wasn't as beautiful as from Kohtu.
One disappointment - Toompea castle
The old medieval castle has been turned into a Parliament house, so from the front it looks like a baroque style palace and only from below the hill you can see the old medieval side - sadly we didn't figure it out until we came back. Well, the tallest tower of the castle, called Pikk Hermann, was still standing so we could see that much of the castle.
Pikk Hermann.
Ah, now that I wrote about Tallinn, I'm even more exited about the trip~ Just hope we can make it this summer! And in the end, I have to mention one website that was for great help before our first trip: http://www.tourism.tallinn.ee/eng
See you next time!
★ Maani
