Summer Travel 2023 – Tallinn – Aug 3-5

Rolling Tsuchinoko

Sep 1

Tallinn would be our last stop in the Baltic States. Getting into the city from the airport proved to be a bit more difficult than we had expected. We thought we would be able to take a tram right down to our Airbnb, but as always, construction put an end to those plans. We found out that a bus would get us close to our stay, but where was the stop? Eventually, we were able to find it. Then came the question of how to pay. I think we were able to buy a ticket from the driver or we were able to buy one with a credit card, but I honestly can't remember. Anyway, we found our way into the city relatively easily.

Tallinn has a very well-preserved Old Town with an impressive wall encircling it. Many of the buildings were 400 to even 600 years old. And one nice thing that Tallinn does is put information plates on many of the old buildings. The plates told us when the buildings were built and what they were used as over the years. It's a great idea and one that other cities should think about doing. I think Tallinn was the best of the three Old Towns we visited in the Baltics. It is big and the wall is in excellent shape. I knew very little of the Baltic States before my visit. They may not be first on your list of places to visit, but you should seriously think about visiting them. I would love to get outside of the cities and see more of the country. I have a feeling that there is much more to see in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.

James and I arrived quite early in the morning of the 3rd. We decided to just stay in the Old Town and explore instead of going to the Airbnb. We covered quite a bit of ground until we were able to check-in. We got up early the next day and got out the door and saw a good majority of the Old Town and it was a good thing we did as the rain moved in around 3 o'clock and settled in. The rest of the afternoon was nothing but rain, sometimes pouring rain. We would be heading even further north the next day. Hopefully, Helsinki would give us a break from the cool, cloudy, rainy weather. I wasn't going to hold my breath.

The Airbnbs James and I stayed in were dropping in quality ever since Gdansk, but Tallinn would be the nadir. The apartment was on what seemed to be the first floor of a two-story house. We couldn't be sure, but we thought that our hosts must live there when they are not renting the floor out. Maybe it was the freezer full of meat that was the tip-off. If they were living there, it was the strangest design I have ever seen. Who puts the shower in the kitchen? Yeah, there was a tiny, and I mean tiny shower in the kitchen. You could not turn around once you closed the door, and good luck washing your back. Plus, if you moved around at all, it felt like the thing was going to tip over. The kitchen sink was tucked into a corner. Oh, and the sink next to the shower was so small it must have come out of a Barbie Dream House. It was a very strange place.