Advertisement
Published: September 6th 2018
Edit Blog Post
We arrived in Tallinn as we were breakfasting in La Travazza - our favourite breakfast spot. We were off on a tour at 9am. After walking down the long pier we were directed to the old beaten up green bus, incongruous with the sleek modern white coaches. This was our Soviet Flashback tour with a local tour guide, Comrade Jerjomin, dressed as a Russian military man. The bus was kept locked until all of us had assembled (about 14 of us, in the early morning drizzle - thank heavens for waterproof jackets) and we were told to form one line, tell him which country we were from, for he was “looking for a spy amongst us, comrades” and then marched around the outside of the bus. We then filed inside the 1991 bus (1960s model) and were given a shot of Russian coffee (vodka) and a Russian croissant (gherkin, or pickle). Our bus then proceeded toward the exit, but an argument broke out between our guide and the driver as the driver had only heard the word “Siberia” in the dialogue and was headed in that direction. Upon turning around, our bus stalled and all of the men had to get
out and push start our bus, still in the carpark of the docks.
We were then taken to the old gaol, on the edge of the harbour, where he explained how everyone wanted control over Estonia because they had a harbour that didn’t freeze over in winter. The people of Estonia are mostly agnostic - they believe in spirituality but not religion For they feel that when a man thinks he is better than everyone else, that he will go to heaven (or paradise) with only his fellow believers, and therefore he can kill everyone else, then this is nto a good belief to be had. But they do care for the environment, the planet and peace. He said that Estonia has become the Silicon Valley of Europe, for they invented Skype and sold it to Microsoft. They have no natural resources in their country so they are concentrating on intellectual resources. Their economy is growing. They believe that with world travel we can eventually gain world peace as we come to know more about our neighbours, to understand them and not believe the propaganda that is put out by the government/media to “divide and conquer”. We, the little
people, can unite and make peace happen.
We also visited the 1980 Olympic sailing centre and where we were given an Estonian “pie” - like a hot dog in puff pastry. More like a sausage roll. After driving through Tallinn again we were taken to the pier where there was a comprehensive tourist shop (yes, fancy that). on board again and it was lunch in La Traviata.
After lunch I planned to write my blogs but they are on the internet, not an app, and it was dodgy until today, so we napped and watched “Blockers” - an hilarious movie about parents letting go of the apron strings. Did I tell you we loved Peter Rabbit the other day?
We decided to have dinner in Indochine, an Asian style restaurant. Wonderful spider crab ? rice paper roll, lobster pad Thai, as we watched our ship pull out from the pier.
After dinner we went to the show in the lounge. This was our second one. At the previous one (Opera classics, this one was show tunes) we’d met a wonderful Canadian couple we had so much in common with (Anne of Green Gables on Netflix, the
music of The Good Lovelies, Australi, Canada, and now Iceland) And they came in and recognised us. It was lovely chatting to them. This show was hits of the musicals.
French champagne and caviar every day since we came onboard! Bliss!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.524s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 7; qc: 45; dbt: 0.106s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 2;
; mem: 1.1mb