Cruisin' to St. Petersburg

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Tallinn, Estonia.

Wow, can you believe it? I'm going to try and write a little on the day I actually visited a city. Will wonders never cease!

Unlike Art, whose favorite city was St. Petersburg, my favorite city has been Tallinn. But then, my favorite city in Italy is Florence, not Rome or Venice. Tallinn is relatively small, having only 400,000 citizens. But, the whole country of Estonia has a population of only 1,500,000.

Tallin is an old, quaint, beautifully kept small city in a small country with narrow winding cobblestone streets that pedestrians share with automobiles. If there were a contest, I don't know who'd win, but from what I saw the sharing is peaceful.

Our tour was a walking tour this time. A bus picked us up at the ship and dropped us off in the "upper" city of Tallin. The first site that greeted us was a magnificent Greek Orthodox church. We finally got to take good pictures of an onion topped church, a site we were anxious to see. In St. Petersburg all of the churches we visited had been turned into museums. This church, however, is still an active church and a ceremony was underway. As soon as we entered the church we could smell (what I think is) the wonderful aroma of incense and we heard the chanting of female voices. We then saw several people surrounding a priest in gold vestments performing a ceremony...perhaps a Mass.

I think one of the beauties of Tallin is the juxtaposition of the very old next to the "new" architecture. In many places you will find very old buildings next to buildings build centuries later. If I could remember the actual centuries they were built, I'd write them down, but I can't. A picture can give you an idea of what I'm talking about. The city is full of such sites.

In both St. Petersburg and in Tallinn it was very interesting to hear how the tour guides spoke of the cities' past under the Soviet control. Neither seemed to be happy with that part of their history and from what they said, most of the citizens weren't either. Our guide today put a humorous spin on it by describing it this way. "The Soviets came to protect us from the Nazis, which they didn't do a very good job of. The Nazis occupied Estonia from 1941 to 1944. Then, after the Nazis left, the Soviets forgot to leave."

Did I mention that there are only 70 days of full sunshine in Tallin? We thought we'd hit the jackpot when we started out our tour. We saw a beautiful blue sky and only a few puffy clouds. And actually, the tour itself was conducted entirely in dry weather. The tour ended in the lower city square, and we had to fend for ourselves to get back to the ship, and as soon as our guide left us, the raindrops began. Art and I found an outdoor cafe and had a wonderful lunch, then grabbed a taxi to the harbor. Unfortunately, the rain was pretty heavy when we got to the harbor and our cruise ship was a good walk from where the taxi dropped us off. We didn't melt, though, and I'm alive and well to type this blog.

I've included several pictures with this blog...I don't see them when I review it so I hope they make it throught when I publish. There is a lot more I could say, but I'm done for today.

Bye until next time.

Carol

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Comments

[MK]

Great entry
I love pics and your description of your tour!! Thank you for posting!!

[Tim]

Fun Blog
Hi, Carol and Art May sent me the link to your blog and I'm enjoying reading your travelogue. The pictures are great. Have fun.