Around 8am this morning we tied up at the cruise terminal of Tallinn, the capital city of Estonia.
I was hanging over our cabin’s balcony rail admiring the view when another cruise ship pulled into the pier alongside ours, taking out our view.
Shortly after that another cruise ship had docked on the other side of that pier and by the time we had got back from breakfast a third cruise ship had tied up, this time alongside the other side of our pier and we were staring into adjacent cabins
Now Tallinn is a relatively small town with a population of around 450,000 and every visitor wants to go and see the Old Town which only makes up a tiny part of it. I estimate these four cruise ships had just dumped 12,000 plus tourists into the Old Town so the streets were really crowded.
Estonia in the past millennium, has had a pretty rough time being occupied by Poland, Denmark, Sweden, Germany (twice) and Russia (twice). It got its current independence in 1991. The Old Town is composed of two parts, the top castle where we went first was where the aristocrats lived and used to be shut off at night from the lower town where the merchants and poorer people lived. We saw some magnificent old buildings here including this impressive Orthodox Church.
From the top Castle there are some magnificent views of the lower town. Up there also were two of the most enterprising street buskers I have ever seen. These two old Estonian guys equipped with a piano accordion and a fiddle had taught themselves the words and music of some popular Chinese songs. In the middle of their bracket they would suddenly start playing a Chinese tune and singing in Chinese. You should have seen the Chinese tourists faces light up with delight and they would rush over and sing along with them and pour money into their hat.
Down in the lower town we visited the world’s oldest continuously operating pharmacy which has been in the same family for over 500 years.
We had a nice lunch at the Peppersack, a restaurant located in a 16th century building, and spent the rest of the day exploring the lovely old streets.
This is a truly beautiful town and late in the afternoon, as the tourists went back to their ships, it had a lovely peaceful feel about it. Jeanette and I have added it to our highly recommended list of places to visit.
Hardys’ Travels 