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Published: July 21st 2017
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Statue of Sean Connery at the Old Scottish Club Tallinn - the final stop on our 8 day trip between the three Baltic capitals. The smallest of the three capitals, but by far the busiest due to it being on the cruise ships' itinerary. And it showed. We were in town for two days and during peak hours, say 10ish to mid-afternoon, you could hardly move in some areas for the accumulation of tour groups, each guide with their own way of leading their group. The best we saw was a lady who was clacking a set of spanish castanets to help keep her group together!
For a change, we'll comment briefly on our hotel, The Three Crowns. Whilst being very well placed right in the heart of the old town, it has been converted and modernised by its owners and a crap job they have done of it too. Based on our, and others in our party too, experience it is clear that they have split the, probably, original rooms into ones that are far too small, and then compounded the problem by jamming beds in - twos/doubles in rooms barely big enough for one. Our room had no wardrobe or cupboard. Pip had to lay her clothes
out on the floor, Paul used the top of the desk. In other rooms our touring companions had to climb over beds to get in, one room had two beds in head-to-head along the wall. And as for breakfast - no orange juice (I did ask) just a faintly medicinal pink water, they couldn't / wouldn't do toast, no butter (only marg), no brown sugar (to go on the porridge) And any complaints were just met with a shrug of the shoulder.
The first morning we were guided by a bought in guide rather than our Explore guide. Tallinn is full of wonderful old, often dutch inspired, buildings, but it is easy walking to get around. Thankfully with our 9am start we were a jump ahead of the worst of the tour groups.
In the afternoon we took the Bastion Tunnel tour, but that was a bit 'what was that about?'. But overall it was just nice to wander around for the rest of the day, and the following day too which we had as our flight out was not untill late afternoon. That said Tallinn doesn't have the coffee shop culture of Riga. Yes, it is stacked
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And you thought Imperial weights and measures made no sense out with eateries but they are very much geared to meals rather than drop-by coffee. With one exception though - Maiasmokk - a delightful coffee and cake shop from 1864, with an attached business specializing in hand crafted marzipan figures. So good, we went twice!
One place we did go into was The Pharmacy, claimed to be the oldest continuously running pharmacy in the world, possibly dating back to 1415. Take a look at the photo of the old pharmacy weights and measures - and you think the old imperial system was difficult!
Having said that Tallinn is stuffed with eateries it does have a problem. With the large numbers of visitors somebody, in the past probably, thought 'we must have a theme - and that theme will be Medieaval!'. And of course when one does it others join in. So there a many of these 'medieaval' eateries in the centre of Tallin, all touting heavily for your business with the use of serving wenches, sword fights, olde instrument bands - we saw one duo playing the hurdy gurdy and ancient bag pipes. The intention was that the final group meal should be at one of these places,
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Page from Russian restaurant menu but there was a bit of kick back against that, though a section of our group did go on the penultimate evening. On that night we went looking for some more contemporary, modern estonian cooking, but unfortunately the two places we tried were fully booked, not help by it raining and so their outdoor areas were not available.
So instead we found ourselves in a Russian restaurant - well it is close by - only to get vodka serving theatrics, a costumed accordian player - who knew that Cliff Richard's 'Congratulations' could be played on an accordian :-) - and a trio of dancers cavorting amongst the tables whilst we ate. Oh well, at least the food was interesting, and the Russian beer pretty good too.
So the trip was over. Would we recommend it? Yes, we had a good time and are pleased to have seen this area that we have not experienced before. If we were recommending you to take a cheap Ryanair or Easyjet flight we would put Riga in first place though. Just a more relaxed and laid back place to be. And who knows, you might get to hear A Piper at those
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Russian beer Gates Of Dawn.
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