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Published: August 26th 2009
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Tallinn Airport
Airports in Northern Europe are weirdly pretty. After returning to Arlanda airport in Stockholm, we breezed our way back through security (have I
mentioned how much less painful it is to travel through Europe?) at the international terminal and perused the duty-free store, picking up
tasty candy morsels.
Ambling toward our gate for the ARN --> TLL flight, we started to experience a sense of deja-vu. We got to the gate 45 minutes before the flight, and . . . again, no one there. We checked the departure boards for cancellations or gate moves, checked the nearby gates, and it looked like we were in fact in the right place. Every once in a while, we'd see one or two more people sit down at the gate, but nothing to convince us that we were not the victims of a last-minute unannounced cancellation. Both of us were too tired (we'd been awake for about 24 hours by this point) to really investigate further, and figured that it'd just work itself out eventually.
It did -- at about 13.20h (20 minutes before the flight was scheduled to depart), the gate agent came zooming across the airport on a scooter (!) and within 15 minutes we had boarded the
Apartment in Tallinn 1
Sleep! Glorious sleep! minibus to our tiny prop plane.
What a flight! Taking off was a little shaky, as they usually are for props, but the landscape (the land devolving into tinier and tinier islands in the Baltic Sea) was just gorgeous. No pictures could do it justice, which is convenient as the camera was too tightly wedged in the backpack at my feet to take any snapshots. About the airline: Estonian Air seems to be a small operation in an uncertain economy (Lithuanian Air went under in January), but that didn't stop them from providing drinks and tasty breakfast sandwiches on our one-hour flight. Can we take
all our trips through Europe?
Landing at Ülemiste airport was predictably hair-raising (gotta love that yaw in a small plane!) but the feeling of finally being at our first real destination was indescribable. The airport itself is an amazing structure (I'll add pictures here when we finally upload them) and the interior is predictably northern European with lots of wood, metal, and glass. I'm sure I'd get tired of them if I saw them every day, but they sure are refreshing after the 1970s feel of American airports.
After retrieving some cash
Apartment in Tallinn 2
This place was really nice. and having a little bit of confusion regarding transit schedules and tickets, we boarded our bus to downtown. We got off the bus at the ferry port (some nostalgia, as this is something both of us experienced the last time we were here) and walked to our apartment in Old Town. Nothing looked quite as good to either of us as that bed did once we opened the door, and it took most of our willpower to not go to sleep right then. But stay awake we did, as we certainly needed dinner.
Food was obtained at a place called Olde Hansa right off Raekoja Plats: VERY tasty wild boar, sauerkraut, tart berries, saffron salad, savoury cheese tart, and cinnamon beer for me; and peppercorn filet mignon, barley, gingered turnips, saffron salad, and a mashed-bean turnover for Erin. Plus a pretty cute waitress, and some period (which period? don't know) musicians to round out the meal.
Erin barely made it through the meal without falling asleep at the table, but we shoveled her into the apartment before things got really embarrassing.
After a much-needed sauna and unpacking a bit, we flopped down on our wonderful bed, and slept forever. Or eleven hours, whichever came first.
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Laurie
non-member comment
I love!
I love your travel blog! I'm enjoying these posts so much. :) And that meal sounds AMAZING.