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Published: August 28th 2013
Hello from Estonia. We arrived this morning, surprisingly rested despite having a 6:30 wake-up call again. At least we gained an hour last night. The skies were completely clear and stayed that way all day. Once again the temperatures were nice and comfortable – in fact at times we even wore the shade-hats that we had brought along. When we sailed at the end of the day, the sea was almost without a ripple – perfectly calm.
We had another comparatively early day, with our tour leaving at 8:10 this morning. So it was the usual rise & shine routine, off to breakfast, and away to Club Fusion for our tour to begin. That may begin to sound pretty much routine to you, but for us each day is a new adventure. There is a little bit to work to get ourselves out of bed, but we have great experiences ahead, so we get up pretty quickly.
Our tour boarded it bus and we met our guide, Siiri. She also spoke very fluent English and her accent was only slight. There was no problem understanding what she had to say. The biggest problem turned out
that she told us so much information, it got hard to remember everything. But we will try to recall some of the high points for you today. Estonia is slightly larger than Switzerland and Denmark, but with far less population.
Our first stop was on Toompea Hill,at the foot of the old city fortress along the wall of the “upper town”. Our guide explained a lot about the history of Estonia and how it interacted with Sweden, Germany, and Russia over the centuries. It was interesting that her reflection on Russia was different than Leo’s view the day before. She said that Russia had asked permission to send 20,000 troops to fight off the Nazis but sent 45,000 and they didn’t go home after WW2. The Russians called it “Liberation of Estonia” and she referred to it as just a change of occupying armies. In Russia they call him Peter the Great, but in Estonia they don’t think he was very great and just call him Peter the First. So there is definitely a different point of view. She told a story that Peter the First had visited Tallinn after starting to build St Petersburg. He reported
said that if he had seen it first then he would have built here instead on where he did, and this would have been called St Petersburg. She was very happy that things did not work out that way. The Estonians are a very proud people and want to be independent.
We walked around the upper town and saw Palace Square with Toompea Castle (where their Parliament now meets) on one side and a Russian Orthodox Cathedral named for Alexander Nevsky on the opposite side. We got to make a quick visit to the church but could not take any pictures. Then we walked a block to St. Mary's Cathedral (called the "Dome Church" by the locals) - the Lutheran Church which was formerly a Catholic Church. We got to visit inside there too. St. Mary's Cathedral is the city's oldest church and a gothic architectural landmark. In both cases the décor was not nearly as grand and elaborate as we had seen in Russia, but their simplicity was very attractive and allowed you to concentrate better on being in church instead of practically a museum. Bottom line probably was the amount of money available to spend
in each place.
We got a view over the wall down into the lower town. Unfortunately everywhere we went had cobblestones to various degrees. Where there were actual sidewalks, they usually were brick and smooth. In the streets when the cars drove, the stones were fairly smooth and level but not as flat as brick. Elsewhere (where the tour seemed to go) they were frequently rounded cobblestones which again were hard on our feet. Janet is having real trouble with these and her feet have been very sore after each of the past few days.
We got a chance to spend some time in some gift shops and then went back to the bus. The tour continued with a drive around town where Siiri pointed out various landmarks. We saw many houses, buildings, and parks, and then had a photo-op outside of town at a large open-air amphitheater. The story we were told is that there are concerts every 5-years, usually with about 30,000 singers on the stage and around 200,000 in attendance standing on the hillside. This was near the start of the breakup of the Soviet Union, when all of Estonia’s population
Organ in Church
Tallinn Estoniais only about one million, so nearly 25% of their people were there. They abandoned the scheduled Soviet songs and started singing Estonian national songs. They say this was the beginning of the “singing revolution” which overthrew the Soviets without firing a single shot.
Then we drove on to the Olympic Village. You don’t remember the Olympics in Estonia? That’s because mostly they are call the 1980 Moscow Olympics (which the USA boycotted). However the sailing competitions were held in Tallinn (Moscow does not have suitable facilities). We got another photo-stop to take pictures of the coast and view of our ship across the bay. Then it was back to the ship and the end of the tour.
We returned to the ship about noon and it looked like every other tour group was coming back at the same time. The pier was very crowded with passengers returning. Since the gangway was going to be pulled in at 12:30 (a comparatively short visit ashore today), every tour had used as much time as was possible. Our neighbor ship on the pier (Brilliance of the Sea) must have disembarked her passengers much later because none
of them were on the pier when we were leaving in the morning nor when we were return now – that would have made a real mess (good planning on somebody’s part).
The first thing we did was check out the Laundromat usage. There are 4 washers and 4 dryers on our deck (about 10 cabins down the hall) and several of them were empty. This definitely had to be “laundry day” so we quickly got the process started. After awhile we got all 4 loads running and we went to the grill for jumbo hot dogs. We are certain that our cabin stewardess was expecting us to go ashore tomorrow in our formal attire, or as nudist. Now we have a more preferable third solution.
The grill was busy but we got our food and enjoyed a quick lunch near the pool. There were quite a few people out in the deck chairs sunning themselves or swimming in the pool, so you see it was really nice weather today. Anyway we went back down and started the drying process which finally finished around 3:00. But now we are all set to have clean
Outdoor Theater
Tallinn Estonia clothes the rest of the vacation and will not have to do any more laundry until we get home.
We decided to rest in the cabin this afternoon – kind of tired from the walking in Tallinn and partly still recovering from St Petersburg. This provided an opportunity to get some of the St Pete exploits documented and posted in the blog. There are over 600 pictures and several dozen movies, so it is going to take awhile to find the best ones to post on the blog – we will let you know when something is out there. Hopefully we can stay current (words and pictures) the rest of the cruise.
We pulled out our wine from the fridge and had some before going to dinner. One of our table neighbors (Bill & Diane) had purchased a wine package where they get 10 bottles of wine for a fixed price. It basically gives them about a $9 discount on each bottle. We didn’t feel we could reasonably use that much ourselves (at least that was our view before going through Russia), but maybe on the next cruise it might be appropriate. We asked
Crown Princess
At dock in Tallinn estonia if the package could be spread over two cruises and that appears likely – we just need to get that confirmed with the head wine steward when we board the next cruise.
Tonight was “Italian Night” and most all the meals were of Italian nature. We started with a bowl of penne pasta cooked by the head waiter. It was delicious – about as good as anything we have gotten “on the hill” in St Louis. Janet then had the Prosciutto and Melon appetizer and David had the Minestrone Soup. Both were great. For our entrees, Janet had Veal Scaloppini and David had a Scallop and Shrimp mixture in cream sauce. For dessert, Janet had chocolate ice cream with chocolate syrup (and nuts) while David had the Tiramisu. This was one of the best dinners we’ve had on he ship.
After dinner, we went to the Princess Theater for a variety show by a British performer named Joe West. He started by playing the sax, then a song on the clarinet, and then one on the flute. Each was done very well. In between he cracked a few jokes. He then started doing tap
dancing and performed a tribute to Sammy Davis Junior. Then he started singing. This guy has a wealth of talent. We suspect he could probably do more things, but the show had to wrap up to get out group out and the next crowd in for the second show – otherwise he probably would have done even more.
We adjourned to our cabin. David went up to the Horizon Court to refill our water bottles and collect a few cookies to take on our tour tomorrow. It appears we will be away from the ship during lunch time, so we were just stocking up with some necessities to keep body and soul together until we can return. But read about that in the next episode.
We also checked our email. The internet on board can be slow so we don’t always read everything but there was a nice note from Valerie. Also a message from Janet’s sister, Kathy, that our sister Helen had successful knee surgery. That was really good news. We will keep thinking good thoughts for her.
We also got the 2
nd St Pete story published and cleaned up the camera so there is more space on the card to take pictures tomorrow. We gain a second hour back tonight also, so we should be pretty well rested by tomorrow morning. See you then.
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