Tallinn, Estonia

Double post day! You knew it was coming at some point. And yet, as we sit here in Bratislava, we're still 4 cities behind (Riga, Vilnius, Krakow and Budapest). So, once we leave Europe, we are going to try to mix things up a bit and attempt shorter, more frequent posts. Understood that "try" is the operative word here, but we promise we will try, so don't give up on us yet! With that, onto the next phase of our journey...

Although the ferry ride from Helsinki to Tallinn was a short one, it represented a meaningful change, as we left Scandinavia and headed into the former Soviet republics along the Baltic Sea. The countries are a lot smaller and the Russian influences are far more obvious. Oh, and everything is significantly cheaper!

The smile on Alexis's face is from noticing that the prices of food and alcohol - on the ferry no less - were less than half as much as they were in Finland.

But prices aside, we had no expectations heading into Estonia and came away thoroughly impressed, a feeling that would continue as we made our way to Riga and Vilnius as well (posts to come!). It seems as though these beautiful cities haven't yet made their way onto the list of traditional backpacking sites, like Prague and Budapest, but that won't (or shouldn't) last long.

Anyways, we went back to Airbnb in Tallinn, with continued success. We stayed in a very cool apartment in the "Wooden District," which is just outside the walls of the Old Town. As the name would suggest, the neighborhood was comprised of many old wooden houses, which had tons of character and gave the impression you were walking through the set of an old Western. The pictures don't do them justice, but we figured we'd include a few to give it our best shot:

And our apartment fit the theme, with wooden beams, walls and doors.

While Alexis was quickly becoming quite the tour guide, studying the city map with great interest, our Airbnb host was actually the editor of the Tallinn version of the "Like a Local Guide," which would become our go-to source for recommendations throughout the next few countries we visited. Near the apartment, we discovered restaurants in old gas stations and open air markets in dilapidated buildings. But for most, the real attraction of Tallinn is the Old Town, which is a stunning medieval city that is still surrounded by massive walls and towers.

The Old Town is very small and almost seems like a self-contained tourist attraction, meaning it didn't appear that many people lived there or had businesses other than retail, food and drinking establishments. This is simply an observation, not a complaint to any extent - it is truly a breathtaking city:

The red-roofed buildings, elaborate churches, stone towers and the Baltic Sea in the background for good measure, make for some amazing landscape photos from Tallinn's abundant elevated locations.

In order to get some of these shots, we had to venture up the city's tallest church, which forced Mike to deal with two of his (many) fears - small spaces and heights.

While there is a high railing and wire protection, the walkway is only about two feet wide!

But it was worth it for the 360 degree views.

Also at some of the key viewpoints were these signs:

We learned that Estonia just repealed their open container laws in June of this year (good timing for us!). However, the city of Tallinn decided that it was not a fan of public drinking, so as a compromise, it installed 11 of these signs throughout the city, indicating the places where it was ok to consume alcohol in public. That's a compromise that we can live with!

Mike was also fascinated by the Tallinn city trains. They were the perfect representation of Soviet-era public transportation (or at least what they had hoped it would be). Dated, ugly, seemingly-neglected and small (we've seen wider gauge tracks for trains at amusement parks!), but useful and efficient for moving large numbers of people quickly. Easy to picture the Green Line in Boston looking like this...in 1920. And like the pictures of the wooden district houses, we did the best we could to capture it in all its glory.

A typical trolley, complete with a few crumbling buildings in the background for effect:

The tracks look like those old tracks in everyone's hometown that hadn't been used in 30 years, complete with giant weeds growing between them:

And finally, an action shot from inside. Our favorite part is that the doors opened before the train came anywhere close to a full stop. Just awesome.

Our apologies for the disgression, but (sadly?) this was one of Mike's favorite parts of the trip so far.

And with that, our short time in Tallinn was over and it was time to board a bus to Riga, Latvia!