Tallinn

---

Ah, our first full day in Tallinn! The beginning of this was marked by the best thing we’d seen in a while -- the inside of our eyelids. We slept like champs. We slept like we hadn’t seen a bed in over 36 hours which, as we calculated, was approximately true.
After waking up and having a leisurely breakfast -- a poor man’s version of what the Danes call smørrebrød (dense bread, Edam, and some sliced ham was what we could procure at the store), yogurt, and coffee -- we left the apartment at the crack of 11 AM to make our way into the wide world.

According to our guidebook, one of the most pleasant areas of Tallinn outside of Old Town was Kadriorg, on the east side of town. The area contains a large park, a smattering of museums, and a cute cafe, plus it was walkable, so it sounded just our speed.
Our expectations about the beauty of this neighbourhood were certainly met. There were leafy residential streets with cute houses, stone statues of birds that the local children liked to climb on, and in general it was the kind of place you would go if you wanted to sit under a tree near a fountain and sketch in your notebook.
After walking around there for a while and seeing some interesting flowers and bees, we decided to walk to KUMU, the star of Tallinn’s art museums and apparently some year’s winner of the “best museum in Europe” prize. So how could we say no? Actually, it turned out that we didn’t need to -- the guards did. Of course: it was Monday. Guess it’s not just an American phenomenon.

We realized that this Monday closure thing would probably extend to most other museums we would want to visit, so slightly dejected but still charmed by the leafy environs we took our time heading back to town. In the meantime, we discovered that Estonians definitely have different priorities in the public access vs. national security scale than Americans tend to: We had seen in our guidebook that the president’s residence was very nearby. I figured we’d see it from afar, behind some gates with some rather mean dogs and/or military chained out front. Turns out it’s actually out in the open, with a walking trail cutting directly across the front parking lot. The only sign of soldiers we saw were a handful of what looked like sailors moseying up to the side door and knocking to be let in. The only other people around were the handful of roofers who were replacing some shingling on the house, and they didn’t seem too scary.

By this time, we were getting pretty hungry, so we decided to check out that cafe. The place is called NOP, which I’m sure stands for something in Estonian. The guidebook described it as “the kind of place that drives up real-estate prices in the surrounding area,” but when they make paninis that tasty, I’m not complaining. 😊 Also, Erin ordered some apple juice (working off an educated guess that õuna means “apple”) which turned out to instead actually be a glass of DRINKABLE APPLES. Imagine liquifying green Jolly Ranchers, but making it actually taste like it came from a plant. Fantastic.

Fed and refreshed, our next stop was back home to rest our feet for a little bit, regroup, and find out our next destination for the day. We saw that the zoo was, in fact, open on Mondays, and that there was both a bus and a trolleybus that got close. So after buying four one-way transit tickets (we attempted “palun nelli piletti?” and got the point across) our next journey was to find where in the heck we were supposed to actually pick up the bus. This took us some time and some frustration trying to: a) find a transit map; b) read the transit map; and c) navigate the underground tunnels at the intersection of two otherwise uncrossable streets, but eventually we made it onto our bus and off to the zoo!

We weren’t sure that we would get too much enjoyment out of the zoo now that we had eaten up a lot of time with our bus adventure, but it turned out that even though the ticket office closed at 18.00h, the zoo was actually open all the way until 21.00h, so we had plenty of time to wander. This zoo fit into the mold of what we are starting to realize about Estonian natural areas: a modest, unassuming entrance, but a gargantuan expanse of open space within.
And not just open space in this case. Tallinn’s zoo has a rather impressive bird collection, including some amazingly colourful pheasants, a handful (though we didn’t mind) of parrots, and a rather creepy display of HUGE RAPTORS. We’re not talking things like those wimpy red-tail hawks or bald eagles. No, they’ve got the real birds: buzzards and golden eagles rounded out the smallest of their collection, and they went up to things like a few types of owls, Stellar’s sea eagles, Eurasian griffons, and what I found the most terrifying, black vultures. we could tell that all of these animals were just itching to bust out of the cages and have a little evening snack.
Not to give the impression that there were only birds in this zoo, we also saw more goat-like mammals than I thought reasonable (including blue Szechuan sheep and some others that now escape us), both American and European bison, and some pretty excitable geese.

Staying nearly to closing time, we were feeling pretty tired and were looking forward to heading home. A trolleybus and a short walk later, and we were unlocking our door. We made a quick and tasty meal, and decided to trek out for a quick taste of one of those “must-have” Estonian treats, Vana Tallinn. As it was now close to 23.00h, we couldn’t find many nice, cozy bars that were still open. However, there were still many places on Raekoja Plats (the central square) that were still open and so we found a cheesy Estonian/American/Italian place where we could grab dessert and a sip of the renowned liqueur. And . . . it was not all that interesting. Kind of like Grand Marnier, but less orangey. It was much better mixed in Erin’s coffee than drunk neat.

After that experience, it was totally time to amble off back to the apartment and fall asleep, preparing for our day of hiking in Lahemaa.

---

Comments

[mjm]

Tere/ halloo !
Bees and buzzards. I like it! Looked up pic of the Blue Szechuan sheep...they're cute and fuzzy-and really are blue! And, when you google them, your travel blog pops up as the 5th entry. Not bad for your first entry. I love it! Armastan sind nii