Advertisement
Published: September 4th 2014
Hi All, We are back in Australia and finally catching up with our travelblog. Feel free to just look at the photos, we won't be offended as we are writing our blog to jog our memories for when dementia sets in, hopefully that is a long way off yet!
On the way to Estonia we detoured to the beach at Parnu Bay, an inlet of the Gulf of Riga in the Baltic Sea. We had made this unplanned stop as one of our fellow travellers had moved from Parnu to Australia when he was only a small child. Our tour guide Marta surprised us all with champagne at the beach and time to dip our toes in the Baltic , everyone joined in the fun rolling up their trousers and paddling in the warm sea water.
The next day we explored along the coast before driving to the Tallinn Song Festival grounds. In 1869 Johann Voldemar Jannsen established the Estonian Song Festival while the nation was still a province of the Russian Empire. This festival was considered responsible for fostering an Estonian national awakening. After that, the new tradition was born and the festivals are still held every five
years. We then walked around Tallinn's Old Town which is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, we enjoyed walking the cobbled streets while admiring the buildings.
After lunch in one of the old towns outdoor cafes we travelled to Kadriorg Palace built for Catherine I of Russia by Peter the Great in Tallinn, Estonia. The palace currently houses the Kadriorg Art Museum, a branch of the Art Museum of Estonia, displaying foreign art from the 16th to 20th centuries. That evening we enjoyed a medieval banquet in the old town the restaurant Olde Hansa was established to honour the Hanseatic League. Olde Hansa was originally the home of a rich merchant, a feast was served accompanied by the three talented musicians playing traditional instruments, one which was called a hurdy gurdy! We really felt as if we had stepped back in time.
The next morning we all board our fast ferry to travel the two hours to Helsinki. We were sad to leave the Baltic States as each one had offered something different. We had learnt a lot about the troubled times the people had endured through wars and Russian occupation and it was good to see
each State prospering and moving forward. We both agreed Tallinn had its own beauty but also had many more tourists, a lot of which were from Helsinki on their holidays which the locals called "Booze Cruises". The cities of Riga and Vilnius had less tourists and were smaller but seemed to us more enjoyable.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.047s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 8; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0269s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb
